Sometimes we loose sight of the fact that every moment we are making choices. We choose what to wear, what to buy, what to eat, whether or not we will workout, if we will read or watch television…. On and on the choices roll without cessation.
Our experience is a stream of unending decisions. Each decision we make creates a new world different from the alternatives we eliminated at the time of choosing. Our life is built upon the worlds we’ve created with our choices.
If we don’t like the quality and content of our life we have the freedom to choose differently at any point. In a moment, we can change our thoughts, our emotional state, or our actions. We choose our state of being.
You alone are responsible for the thoughts you have, the actions you take and the perspective through which you view the world.
Over the years I have heard people blame their failures on everything from hormones and genetics to their environment at work. Certainly, external or biological factors can influence our life but they cannot control it. In fact, multiple fields of research indicate that our choices have much more impact on our lives than any other factor.
Examine your choices carefully. So much of our choosing occurs while operating on auto-pilot, what David Foster Wallace calls, “the automatic default setting” (below is a link to his commencement speech which is excellent). Beware of the language you use when talking with yourself and with others. Choose to engage in thoughts and actions that are trending towards the images you have in your head of the person you wish to become and the life you want to lead.
Our choices always have more significance and value when they lead us towards the things we want in life. However, we can’t know exactly where we’re headed unless we develop and maintain a picture of our dreams. Most of us have given this some thought superficially, but few have rolled up their sleeves and developed a belief system, philosophy of living, or mission statement beyond some brief, and intermittent intellectualizing. This type of vision crystallizes our view of the world and brings the most appropriate choices into clear view.
With that said, I will be asking (yet again) what’s on the horizon over the next 4, 8, and 12 months (and beyond). What are the things you will work towards? What do you want to achieve? It doesn’t matter if this involves 3 hours of exercise each week or 20. What matters is that we continue to explore the role that movement and exercise play in your life.
Failure to do this makes us more like the masses who stumble through life groping around in the dark instead of living their dreams out loud.
Choose to train and to focus on the session. Choose to nourish your body with nutrient dense food and your mind with constructive, ameliorative thoughts and notions. Engage only in activities that enrich your life.
If you’ve never heard this speech, you should have a listen (David Foster Wallace commencement)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CrOL-ydFMI
We are always after better choices
I will be checking in, all the time.