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The Freedom of Choice

In every moment we have a choice. The freedom to choose our actions that create our day, month and year all adding up to the life we are creating for ourself. Even if you think are not choosing, you are. No decision is a decision. The choices we make either support our goals and the life we truly want to live or they are taking us further away. Our choices cause us to feel great pleasure in our life or they are creating pain and suffering. Without focusing on the past too much, reflect back on the last couple of days, the last week or even the last month. What choices have you made that led you to where you are or allowed you to stay stagnant with no growth at all? What do you want to accomplish? How do you want to feel? If you’re not sure what choices you have made, then just look at your actions.

If you want to lose weight and you choose to not work out or eat fast food, than the choices you are making do not support your goal. Every time you look in the mirror and see no progress you create pain and suffering for yourself. If you want a new job, but you don’t update your résumé, network or apply for jobs, than your choices are not supporting your goal and everyday when you go to work at a job you don’t want to be at, you create pain and suffering for yourself. If you are unhappily in a relationship and you choose to complain to everyone around you, rather than communicating to your partner to see how they feel, make an effort to improve your relationship by working on you or decide to end the relationship, than you create pain and suffering for yourself and your partner. How about anytime you need to drive somewhere you have never been and are unfamiliar with. If your goal is to arrive at your destination, you can choose to put the address into the navigation on your phone, print out directions, use a map, or you could just get in the car and drive, hoping that you get there. Which choice will allow you to arrive at your destination? Which choice do you think will give you more pleasure than pain?

You can take this formula and apply it to any part of your life. The formula to feeling pleasure is not complicated, but it’s also very easy to feel pain and suffering. So you have a choice, what do you want to feel, pleasure or pain? Choice is a decision to take action or not.Tony Robbins said, “A real decision is measured by the fact that you’ve taken a new action. If there is no action, you haven’t truly decided.” So whatever your goals are, whatever life you want to create for yourself, the first thing you have to do is choose to take actions that will support your goal so you can ultimately feel more pleasure and less pain.