Choosing our Path

Three books that I strongly recommend are Robert Fritz's book, The Path Of Least Resistance , Robin Lennon's book, Home Design from the inside out: Feng Shui Color Therapy, and Self-Awareness, and Steven R Covey in his book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Both books provide choice-making strategies that are key to getting ourselves moving when we seem to be stuck.

1. We can choose our reaction to every circumstance . Now, I know this is a very unpopular though in today's "victim" society. However, no matter what happens to us, we have the choice how we react to it. We choose our path. No one chooses it for us. This is why the buck stops here folks. We can choose to react in a negative or positive way.

Ms Lennon uses an example in her book: All our summer clothes are stored in boxes in the garage. There is so much junk stacked up that we can't get to our summer clothes. We have choices. We can fret and stew and be angry at the situation. We can go out and buy more clothes. We can pull ourselves together, march out into the garage, clear a path to the boxes, and retrieve our summer clothes.

Let's look at each choice.

A. Stew and fret: our blood pressure rises, our discomfort level rises, we still don't have access to our summer clothes. If we wait long enough it will be winter again. As you can see, nothing has been solved. We remain a victim of circumstances and our own lack of action.

B. Buy more clothes: Well, we now have summer clothes to wear. But, where do we store them when we are done? Back in the pile of other boxes in the garage for the cycle to start all over again next year? It has cost us money we could have used elsewhere and there is still no solution to the real problem, convenient, organized storage.

C. Clear a path and retrieve our summer clothes. In doing this, hopefully we will do more than just clear a path. Perhaps we will better organize for next year. We might even find some of those missing things we have been looking for. In clearing the path, perhaps we will make a commitment to do a little more clearing each month until it is done. At least in clearing the path we have reached some sort of middle ground that we can look back on and see some satisfaction in. And, we have taken responsibility for our situation.

2. Choice by Consensus

This one is simple. You make a choice as part of a group or based on the information and advice provided by others. The alleged logic is that you don't have to take full responsibility if it doesn't work out. You risk getting nothing that you wanted. And if by some chance you do get something, it isn't really yours.

3. Choices based on the negative consequences

If you are always worrying abut the negative consequences of a decision, you often go ahead with things simply because you don't want to risk what might happen if you don't. You can get so caught up in the negative that you lose track of what is really important. And, you can feel victimized by these possible negative consequences, with resentment leading to anger.

However, there are positive sides to this choice method. Lennon explains that possible negative consequences can be positive motivators! This does not mean you avoid what you don't want rather than choose what you do want. The philosophy for our laws is based on this negative consequences theory. Deter possible crime by the possible negative consequences for that crime.

4. Choice by default

Lennon explains that this decision-making choice is that you don't make a decision at all, you just wait to see what happens.

My example: You are standing on a railroad track. A train is coming. You have three choices. You can get off the track. You can remain on the track and you can choose not to choose and the choice will be made for you. That is the default choice. You must be willing to accept whatever the consequences for not choosing. And even that is a choice.

5. The process rather than the results

In Lennon's decision-making strategies she explains the difference between focusing on the HOW rather than the What. She uses the following example: Your end goal is to have a home for your heart. "You decide to take some decorating classes, hire a decorator, or purchase a bedroom set. You then assume that by doing so, you'll eventually end up with your goal," she explains.

"This is not necessarily the case," she advises. " You can go to college without becoming educated, eat healthy foods and still feel unhealthy, decorate your home and still, in the end, not have a home for your heart. Therefore you can opt to use the actual steps of the design process to further develop your vision, but don't entirely rely on them to bring about what you need and desire."

6. Choice by Elimination.

Lennon says, "You procrastinate, letting things go unattended until they become intolerable, and then you have no recourse other than the one you could have chosen months earlier!" Results: frustration, anxiety. It cripples your creativity. The end result, do to the haste and rush of doing something, anything to change things, is lack of balance and harmony. The result will not be satisfying nor done as well as if you had taken the time to do it the way you wanted to in the first place.

7. Conditional choices

Lennon explains: "You decide that before you can totally commit yourself to your inner vision, you must meet some arbitrarily chosen condition." That you will have a home for your heart as soon as your neighbor stops throwing his beer cans in your yard. That you will be organized as soon as your kids start picking up their rooms. She continues, "You set up false cause and effect relationships, and endowing external circumstance with the power to bring you happiness, or keep you from it. It's usually the latter that tends to happen."

8. Choosing only what seems reasonable and possible.

Self-limiting, safe, no risk... fearing failure you choose only those things that you know will not fail. In doing so, you limit yourself and your dreams. You settle rather than dream. You settle, and 20 years down the road wonder what happened to your life.

One of my favorite concepts from Steven R Covey is that we need to act, rather than be acted upon. Make choices before they are forced on us, where we then have no choice.

The path of Least Resistance, what seems like the easy path now, often turns out to be a difficult one down the road. In never saying no, we give up the things we really wanted to do for ourselves. In never setting firm boundaries, others are always infringing on our personal rights, our personal space. If we take the easy road, because it is easier than the struggle that it takes to make our dreams come true, we live a life of disappointment. We settle for less than we deserve. We settle for less than life can be. We never risk. We never grow. We pass up opportunities and we stop short of our goals.

Sometimes the road to our dreams is paved with hard work. But it is worth it!