Our Choices Make Us Who We Are

“We all make choices, but in the end our choices make us.” ― Ken Levine

I’ve been thinking about choice this week.  Sometimes we may feel like we don’t have a choice, but usually we do.  It may be that you have 2 options and neither of them are really great, but you still get to choose between the 2 not so great options.  It’s that choice that you make even when it’s not a great choice, that makes us who we are.  Each choice that you make builds on the last one that you made.  It directs your life just a bit more and creates the reality that you now have.

I like to think of choice as the many paths that we can take in our lifetime.  Each time you come to a place in the path where you could go right, left, forward or even backward, you have a choice to make.  Each of these choices will have consequences and lead you down a different path.  Maybe one of these paths is more suited to you than another.  Or, maybe a couple of the paths would be okay for you to take.  Regardless of which path you end up taking, it will take your life in that direction and lead you to still more choices for you to make.

Life is a series of these choices.   Sometimes, they can be as simple as do I want to buy apples or oranges at the grocery store.  If you want to make an apple pie but you buy oranges, then it’s going to be really hard to make that apple pie.  In this case, the choice to buy the oranges has the consequence of not being able to make the apple pie.  If you make the opposite choice and buy the apples, then the consequence is that you can serve an awesome apple pie for dessert at dinner.

Sometimes, these choices can be life changing.  If you went to college, then think back to deciding on what major to pick.  That was a choice that had much larger consequences.  The major you picked led you down a certain path in regards to what you studied and perhaps where you ended up getting a job.   For many people, picking that major wasn’t a simple choice.  You make one choice, for a major, then decide it’s not quite right and pick a different choice.  Whichever choice that you settle on, it can have a huge consequence in shaping life immediately after college.

Whether it’s a major,  life-changing choice or a simple everyday choice, this chance to choose your next path keeps happening over and over every day.

I just made some travel plans for this summer.  When I went to schedule the flights, I had SO MANY CHOICES!  It was almost too many because I had to take so many variables into consideration in order to pick the flights that worked best for me.  Sometimes that’s how choice is presented to us.  It’s a matter of narrowing down your choices rather than picking from A or B.

Whether you’re choosing from multiple and sometimes similar choices, like when you schedule a flight, or you’re choosing between 2 very different choices, what you finally decide to do has consequences.  What you pick will take you down one path or another.  Each path will lead you to your next choice and it’s all of those series of choices that you make in your lifetime that make you who you are in this present moment in time.  If you could go back and change just one choice, your present reality would be different in some way.

We obviously can’t rewrite our own history and make different choices, but what we can do is learn from those choices and understand that we are a product of all of the very many choices that we have made in our lifetime.  It’s how we got to where we are in this moment in time.

Choice is also how you can redirect your future if you’re not happy with your current situation.  Make a different choice when you come to a juncture in your path and notice the consequences that occur.  Notice if this choice takes you to where you really want to go & notice if you need to try yet another choice.

You are your choices.  Each one, whether large & eventful or small & inconsequential, has an impact on your life.  Choose wisely and then make changes to your path as needed.

For help in making the choices in your life, schedule a private session with me.  We’ll connect you to your own internal wisdom so that you can make the choices that work best for you.