The Choice is Ours
This morning I pause to think about how I want to start my day. I realize I am at choice as to what I want to think and how I want to feel.
Personally, I want to feel good about me, my life and my experiences. I want to feel successful. I want to laugh, feel prosperous and capable of achieving the dreams I have for myself. Often though, the conditions in my life appear to loom so large within my mind that the idea of feeling anything but overwhelmed and insignificant seems distant and unattainable.
I feel conflicted about what to pay attention to. Should I focus on my current state of affairs or my dreams? Am I irresponsible if I turn my back on what is currently happening in my life so I can focus on my dreams? What’s the ‘right’ or responsible thing to do?
Have you ever had that conflict or those thoughts and feelings?
What do you do with them?
Personally, I choose to work from the understanding expressed by Einstein in the following quote, “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”
This perspective has had a powerful and positive impact on my life experience. Throughout the years, I have realized that no matter how much I focus on the problems in my life, it never helps them get better. Instead, the difficulties seem to grow in direct proportion to the attention I give them, causing me to feel more frustrated, unsure, desperate and miserable. Whereas, when I choose to deliberately focus on ideas and dreams that feel good, my life improves. I feel happier, more hopeful, and more open and responsive to situations that arise to move me in the direction of my dreams.
By choosing to act upon what makes me feel good, I find myself lifted up and out of the struggle long enough to see the possibilities that exist for me — solutions I can’t see while looking through the eyes of the problem. Instead of looking at my feet and my pain, I choose to look at the horizon where possibilities await me, and reach for something that feels better. And like water falling on a barren, parched desert turning it into a kaleidoscope of life and color, opportunities arise where there appeared to be nothing just moments, hours or days before. Beautiful and full of possibility…
What do you do? How do you help yourself to choose happiness and your dreams when the conditions of your life appear to be the opposite of what you want?
Rebecca Victor and Your Joyful Path, 2012 to the present date. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Rebecca Victor and Your Joyful Path with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
