Life Is About Choices

Life is like a road. There are long and short roads; smooth and rocky roads; crooked and straight paths. In our life many roads would come our way as we journey through life. There are roads that lead to a life of single blessedness, marriage, and religious vocation. There are also roads that lead to fame and fortune on one hand, or isolation and poverty on the other. There are roads to happiness as there are roads to sadness, roads towards victory and jubilation, and roads leading to defeat and disappointment.

Just like any road, there are corners, detours, and crossroads in life. Perhaps the most perplexing road that you would encounter is a crossroad. With four roads to choose from and with limited knowledge on where they would go, which road will you take? What is the guarantee that we would choose the right one along the way? Would you take any road, or just stay where you are: in front of a crossroad?

There Are No Guarantees.

You do not really know where a road will lead you until you take it. There are no guarantees. This is one of the most important things you need to realize about life. Nobody said that choosing to do the right thing all the time would always lead you to happiness. Loving someone with all your heart does not guarantee that it would be returned. Gaining fame and fortune does not guarantee happiness.

  The only thing you have power over is the decisions that you will make, and how you would act and react to different situations.

It’s Not About ‘Right’ or ‘Wrong’

It’s easy to look back and decide you made a ‘wrong’ decision.  But as I always tell my clients, we all have 20/20 vision with hindsight. 

It is only after you have made a decision and experienced the consequences of it, do you realise whether it was the ‘right’ decision.  But rather than thinking of a decision as having been ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, I prefer to think of a decision as having ‘worked’ or ‘not worked’ for me.  It then becomes useful feedback on which I can base my next decision.  It becomes a trial and error process.  And I keep making decisions until I get to my destination.

If a choice takes you away from your destination,  do what the GPS in your car does – recalculate, get back on track and keep moving.

Take The Risk: Decide.

Since life offers no guarantee and you can’t ultimatlely know whether your decision will work for you or not, you might as well take the risk and decide. Movement is definitely better than staying stuck.

Although it is true that one wrong turn could get you lost, it might also be that such a turn becomes  an opportunity for an adventure or new possibility.

You have the choice of being a lost traveller or an accidental tourist of life – or of being a conscious traveller by making more conscious choices and decisions.

• Know where you are
• Know your destination
• Start by choosing which way to go
• Adjust your course based on your feedback
• Keep repeating the process until you hit your destination

By embracing this process you are chosing to live your life consciously instead of remaining a bystander or a passive audience to your own life story.

And whatever the outcome to any choice or decision you make, learn from it.  Learn what works and what doesn’t work for you at any given moment in time.

If you do make decisions which don’t work out for you (which you will), at least don’t make the same ones in the future – make new ones. Remember you always have the chance to make better decisions in the future.