Life is about choices

“Life is all about choices. How many people are trapped in their everyday habits: part numb, part frightened, part indifferent? To have a better life we must keep choosing how we’re living.”

– Albert Einstein, theoretical physicist

www.onhold.on.ca

Image from www.onhold.on.ca

As a coach, I often see individuals who are limiting their freedom to fully choose.

Which of these choices have you been fully intentional about?

• The choice of career or vocation
• The choice to be healthy and fit
• The choice of friends and associates
• The choice of how you spend your free time
• The choice of where you live, and the communities you associate with
• The choice of the thoughts and attitudes you bring to each day

Exercise:

Where are you currently trapped and limited by your everyday habits and thinking?

What new and intentional choices can you make to achieve a better life?

From A.J. Cronin, physician and novelist

“Life is no straight and easy corridor along which we travel free and unhampered, but a maze of passages, through which we must seek our way, lost and confused, now and again checked in a blind alley.  But always, if we have faith, a door will open for us, not perhaps one that we ourselves would ever have thought of, but one that will ultimately prove good for us.”

– A.J. Cronin, physician and novelist

How did you get where you are today? How many twists and turns, roadblocks, forks in the road and dead-ends have you found on your journey? The shortest distance between two points may be a straight line – however, life virtually never works out this way.

A not-so-funny thing is that we often get upset when our intentions are thwarted and our expectations are unfulfilled, in spite of our knowledge of how life works. Perhaps our job is simply to look within ourselves in faith, and take the first step.

Exercise:

How has following your internal GPS helped you make some of your life choices?

During those points of decision, how were you able to turn a dead end into an open door?

Do What you Can

“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”

– Theodore Roosevelt

Image from www.theodore-roosevelt.com

Image from www.theodore-roosevelt.com

Many of us are waiting for the perfect time, the perfect person, for all the stars to align before we take action, and before we will be happy. Even if this were to happen occasionally, it never seems to last. What then?

Roosevelt was both a visionary and a realist, charting the course to a better future while still taking into consideration the reality of our daily lives.

Exercise:

Look at the day ahead of you. What can you do with what you have and where you are?

You may surprise yourself.