In my work as a coach, writer, course creator, facilitator I share the belief that we all have choices.
We can’t choose what happens to us, but we can always choose how we respond.
This has been a tough belief to work on, and gets tested and challenged a lot.
Because we don’t want to think any further than how we feel in the moment.
And it’s easier to become what happens to us. To blame, and excuse.
But it is true that we can choose our response.
It is also true that our choices always have consequences.
And right now choice and consequences are being tested.
(And is always being tested, but often it’s hidden away).
Choices in our lives can be as a collective, on a macro scale or can be smaller, more personal, micro decisions.
For example I believe that as a society we can choose to end poverty in the UK, but we would have to give up things ourselves, and so we choose not to.
We can choose to be kinder every single day, but sometimes we don’t have the energy, so we choose not to.
And right now, we are reminded that people across the World have more challenges of choices, with greater consequences. They can choose not to join their army, but will be arrested, maybe even killed for it. They can choose not to agree with their leader, and voice their concerns, but will be beaten for it. They can choose to leave, get to a safe place, but they leave loved ones and homes behind. Tougher choices. Greater consequences.
Internally we can always work on not just the choice of what we do, but the choice of how we are inside, how we be.
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.” -Viktor Frankl, 'Man's Search for Meaning'
So I still believe we all the freedom to choose our response, however this doesn’t mean that there is equality is consequences and impact of our choices.
For those of us that enjoy small consequences for our choices, we probably owe it to those who face greater consequences, to think harder about our freedom of choice.
eleanor