Dr. Phil said, “when you chose the behavior, you choose the consequences.” At first this seems like an easy concept to grasp and agree with. But, let’s look deeper.
Every choice you make generates hundreds maybe thousands maybe millions of outcomes. Many of those outcomes or results or situations are negative, painful, hurtful, and can even ruin your entire life. And, what is more annoying is most of our choices are made like this, It seemed like a good idea at the time.
Let’s look at some choices and then think about all the possible outcomes, from the positive to the worst case scenarios.
- Dating
- Marriage
- Having children
- Driving a car
- Being hired for a job
- Using drugs/alcohol
- Eating
- Traveling
- Going to school
- Launching a business
- Staying home
- Participating in a sport
- Choosing a hair stylist
- Spending money
And, of course, we make hundreds of choices all day long from small to big. When something turns out negatively; we get in a car crash, our children are disrespectful, our partner cheats on us, our washing machine floods our floor, etc. When these things happen we do not see our choice point in all of this. We quickly go into victim. “Why me?”. “Why is this happening to me?” “What am I going to do now?” “This is not fair!”, etc. But, here is the thing, when you chose the behavior, when you make a choice, which you do all the time, whether it feels like a choice or not, every outcome YOU HAD TO DO WITH. You get in a car crash (which was not your fault) you chose to drive and be on the road. Your partner cheats on you-you chose that partner and to be in a relationship. Your kids are driving you nuts? You chose to have kids (“No I didn’t, my pregnancy was unplanned”) Hmm, I wonder what choice you made (planned or unplanned) that could result in pregnancy?
There are some circumstances in life we did not choose-cancer diagnosis or disease, being raped or a victim of a crime, a natural disaster for example. Our choice point there is how we are going to cope and heal from this tragedy?
Owning all your life circumstances, searching for the silver lining, reframing the circumstance into something meaningful to you, means that you are on the path to an empowered life. That you are in charge of your life. That, yes, there are waves but you are learning to surf. This is not easy, nor is it the norm. (The norm is to be a victim, whine, complain, be disappointed, angry and resentful when life doesn’t go our way).
Step out of the victim mentality and instead chose to have the courage to own, embrace and learn from every choice you make.
