Empowered Choices: How to Be Aware Enough to Give Yourself a Choice
Most of the problems I’ve experienced in life resulted mainly from my inability to recognize the choices that were laid out before me.
When you lack choices, you can tend to feel stuck in your circumstances, directionless, or powerless.
You may even feel desperate for a solution, forcing you to make decisions that are less than ideal and may even result in a situation where you’re worse off than before.
Having the ability to be aware enough to give yourself a choice can help you move forward, move through, and move on from whatever problem you face.
Take Janie, for example. Let’s say she’s graduating college in two months and still hasn’t found a job.
She’s surrounded by friends and peers who have already accepted job opportunities and constantly talks about the new cities they’re all moving to.
Because of her circumstances, the only solution Janie sees is moving back home until she finds a job.
So she imagines moving back to her tiny hometown, with her parents, while all her friends are making these big moves in progressing their lives forward. She feels like a failure like her life isn’t amounting to anything.
However, if Janie were able to gain some awareness of the situation she faced, she’d be able to give herself more solutions, thus feeling more in control of the situation overall.
The first thing Janie needs to do is give herself some perspective.
When you face setbacks that are less than ideal, it’s important to take a step back and see things from a third-person point of view.
This will help you see the problem in a different light, allowing you to size it up accurately instead of blowing the problem out of proportion because of how pressing it feels.
For Janie, this would look like understanding that despite the fact that most of her friends have jobs before graduation, not everyone in her graduating class has a job.
When she starts to recognize this and look around, she realizes that most of her classmates are still trying to find jobs, too.
Putting her problem into perspective would also mean Janie taking a step back and realizing that her not having a job at this current moment likely won’t deeply impact her overall career in the grand scheme of things.
Now that Janie has some perspective, she should try to recognize the boundaries she’s knowingly or unknowingly put in place that are holding her back.
Sometimes, when we face a problem, we only see whatever solution feels logical to us at the moment.
Whatever reality we perceive is how we judge the situation and thus the solution.
For Janie, the logical solution, if she doesn’t have a job, is to move back in with her parents. Because that’s what most college graduates in her situation would do.
But what if this is a boundary she’s put in place that’s just holding her back from seeing other viable options?
Janie would probably justify moving back in with her parents on the basis of needing a place to live, wanting to save money, and it being a comfortable and familiar place for her.
But what if Janie removed these boundaries, then what solutions would she be able to come up with?
When you remove the boundaries and confides in which you’ve placed yourself, you’re able to foster a greater awareness of the situation and thus give yourself more choices.
Since Janie was able to remove the frivolous boundaries and constraints she had placed herself within, she’s able to explore options she had not first recognized.
She starts to realize that more options than just moving back in with her parents exist for her.
One of those options would be to move to NYC with her best friend (who already has a job there) and get a part-time job until Janie can find a full-time job in the field of her interest.
Or maybe, she can finally explore a dream she’s had since high school- joining the Peace Corps.
She even considers the possibility of moving in with her grandparents, who live in North Carolina. She thinks this could be a unique opportunity to spend time with them and learn from them.
When Janie isn’t so focused on the problem and the easiest viable solution, she starts to recognize that although she may not be following the traditional path like everyone else, she still has options and can give herself unique opportunities.
Life isn’t about passively waiting for opportunities to come your way. It’s about taking an active role in your own life and creating opportunities for yourself.
Life has a funny way of not going at all how we expect. Knowing this, we have to have the ability to pivot. But beyond that, we have to create opportunities for ourselves, even when we don’t see any.
The only reason I became really good at how to give myself choices is because I was once in a situation where I felt like I didn’t have any.
I could’ve never anticipated that one year after my first 9–5, living in a different state than my family, I’d be quitting said job to write a book, all while moving back in with my family.
Quitting my 9–5 to write a book was a giant pivot in my life but one I knew I had to take advantage of. But at first, I didn’t know how.
When I was first contemplating making this pivot in my life, I knew the first step was quitting my current 9–5 and moving back to my home state.
Except, at first I was thinking about just getting another 9–5 and being closer to my family.
I knew I wanted to take writing seriously but I thought it would have to remain a side project.
It wasn’t until I was talking to a friend on the phone that he suggested I move back in with my family, which would cut my living expenses, and allow me to write full-time.
When he first suggested this, I was dumbfounded…I hadn’t even considered this an option.
“Why not? I bet your parents would let you move back in,” he convinced me.
“I don’t know, I mean I just moved out. And they’re looking forward to being empty nesters for the first time anyway…I don’t want to completely mess up their lives too,” I replied.
“You never know if you never try. Just at least ask. And if they say no, you know with 100% certainty that that’s not an option for you,” he said.
After approximately 30 seconds of contemplation, I told my friend I had to go and promptly dialed my mom’s phone number to ask her if I could move back in.
It wasn’t a well-thought-out plan at all and since I’m a planner, it scared me. But I knew I had to at least be open to the idea and willing to try.
Five months later I found myself packing up my first apartment and moving back in with my parents to take a giant pivot and pursue writing full-time.
At first, I had limiting beliefs about my future and what I was capable of that prevented me from seeing an opportunity that lay right in front of me.
I thought that the only opportunity I had to pursue writing was doing it as a side hustle.
I thought that because I had already moved out of my parent’s house and gotten a full-time job, I wasn’t welcome back.
I was so focused on what I assumed the most logical plan was, that I didn’t even realize I could just create a new opportunity for myself entirely. It was the easiest viable option, after all.
Creating opportunity for yourself means challenging your traditionally held beliefs and thinking creatively about solutions.
It means recognizing an idea is good, but that it can be better.
You never want to be caught in a situation where you’re so attached to one idea of doing something that you can’t see hidden opportunities that make your dreams a greater reality.
Imagine if I had just moved back to my home state, got a new apartment and job, and continued to write on the side.
I probably wouldn’t have written my book as soon as I did. It probably would’ve taken me months, even years longer to get to the point I’m in my writing career today.
I thought that the only way I could pursue my dreams was on the side. But I had an opportunity to do something even greater, I just had to create that opportunity for myself.
In life, you have to be so aware of your situation or problem, that you can give yourself multiple choices to work with.
Giving yourself these choices can offer you more control over the situation, relieve anxiety, stress, and worry, and allow you to explore unique opportunities.
Just to recap, to be aware enough to give herself a choice, Janie (and I) had to:
- Give herself perspective
- Recognize the boundaries she’d put in place
- Get creative and think beyond the easiest viable solution
- Create opportunities where she thought there were none
