CHOICE

​"Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it's always your choice." — Wayne Dyer

It’s been said that everything we do or don’t do has profound consequences for our successes and failures.  Our task, then, is to examine all of our actions carefully:  everything we do; everything that we don’t do; everything we could do, should do, want to do, or shouldn’t do.  Our task is to examine all of these activities and possibilities, to ensure that we are doing everything we must, yet also to ensure that we remove all activities that only serve to hold us back.

Some decisions are easy, especially if we’ve done the homework to examine our values.  For example, the decision to sleep in or get up early to go to the gym can be an easy decision if you value your health and physical fitness.  In a similar way, the decision to invest in your personal growth can be an easy decision if you value yourself and believe in your self-worth.

Many decisions, however, are far more difficult:
 

• You get an invitation to two different parties, which one do you go to? 
• You’re the manager of a company and have to lay off one your employees, but they are all great team players, so which one do you let go? 
• You want to get married, settle down, and have kids, but the partner you’re in love with has been clear that they don’t ever want to marry and have children.  What do you do?

 
We can’t do it all.  Time and space limits what we can do.  The choices we make have a profound effect on our outcomes, and it’s not possible to know what those outcomes will be beforehand, even with the best-made plans.  The best we can do, then, is to make the most of every moment by making choices that build us up, and build up those who are around us too, rather than tear us down. The best choices are the ones that edify rather than degrade, regardless of what others may think.
 
REFLECTION
What choice have you been making lately?  Are they choices that build or destroy?  What kind of choices do you want to start making moving forward? What’s been holding you back?