It is A Choice.
What we may see as an insignificant choice can have significant impact on our life, what we will experience and the results of it in our life for a moment, day, month or future.
I woke up full of energy. I got a glimpse of the sun rising and quickly decided to take the opportunity of my day off. It was 6:15am, and off I went for a walk along the river. The birds were chirping. The morning was alive with nature’s life all around. A large ship cruised by. There was peace and harmony all around. It was a little choice. Nothing earth shattering. I realized I had the choice to be inside or outside. The choice to go out, enjoy the morning and opportunity of a summer day off or stay inside, sleep in and be oblivious to the beauty and enjoying life.
I came back and had breakfast on my new deck with the warmth and light of the sunshine just enveloping me.
By 6pm however, I was feeling a bit down with a sense of negativity even though my day had gone well. It started with thoughts of uncertainty about the future. The more uncertainty and “what if’s” I had, the more I had a sense of foreboding and darkness. BUT, I have a choice! A choice to change…change the questions within, change my focus from what if I don’t have enough, what if this doesn’t work out, to what are the things I’m looking forward to? What are the good things happening in my life? What are the positives?
The reality is we can go into our future with confidence. That does not necessarily mean we may experience certainty. Things can change in a moment. We do not know the future, so we can’t be “certain”, but we can be confident. Even if there is change, we can handle it, we can listen to our Spirit and be in tune with what God is saying and doing. We can have confidence in God. We can have confidence that no matter what it seems like; it can work out for the best.
So I made a different choice. I chose not to go down the path of negativity, depression and feeling down. I chose to get up physically and go outside again. To go outside for me is a choice to change my physical atmosphere and my physiology. In turn that is part of the process for me to get outside and beyond myself and any negative thoughts. I decided to write, reach out to others and expand my present horizons.
There may be very real negative things that we are facing or negative news we get, but we have a choice in how we will process it. We have a choice to acknowledge it, and a choice in how we want to handle it and look at it. We all have issues we have to deal with, but it’s a choice whether we see it as a burden on our shoulders or whether we realize it’s like a piece of luggage. It is a separate entity from our self. We are not the luggage. We can throw the luggage in the garbage, put it down, put it on a plane, open it, disperse of the contents or use the contents, etc. It’s a choice. Sometimes we need to give ourselves the choice of letting go, give ourselves the choice of time to process or heal and not be so hard or have such stringent expectations. You know sometimes at the airport we arrive without our luggage, or our luggage arrives somewhere else without us. We are not our luggage and we have a choice to change whatever is not working well for us right now….
If you are not at peace with where you are right now or with certain things that may be bothering you, that is your first clue to recognize you have the choice of change. Lack of peace is always a key that you need to make a different decision in some way. It could be the way you are looking at it. It could be your expectations. It could be something you are doing or not doing. What are the choices you need to make? What are the choices you have? What are the choices that will bring you peace?