It’s easy to feel as if life is happening to us – as if we have no control or no say in what happens in our stories. Especially as we all navigate the repercussions of this global pandemic it’s so natural to slip into a victim mentality where we struggle to comprehend just how little control we’re seemingly left with.
Think back to your life before COVID-19. With all the freedom in the world, just how much were you really living? With endless options available to you, how many were you actually taking advantage of? Or were you really just taking it all for granted with the mindset of “one day” influencing your daily habits and decisions? After going through this experience of limitation, restriction, and uncontrollable change it’s easier to pinpoint the things that mean the most to us. All of a sudden it’s as if we can write pages upon pages of the things we love about our lives, the things we can’t wait to do and experience, and the dreams we have that we just have to pursue.
One of the biggest lessons I’ve learnt this past year is that no matter how much we feel like we’re not in control of our lives, we truly are. Your life – your choice. No matter what happens in your life or what situation you find yourself in, you have a choice as to how you’re going to handle it. You get to choose how it will or will not define you, and you get to choose what you’re going to do about it.
You might not be able to always control external events or the behavior of others, but you get to choose your perspective and influence your internal world.
This time in lockdown has taught me that mindset is everything; 80% of my personal happiness comes from me and the choices I make about how I want to live my life on a daily basis. The only thing that makes us victims is our mentality about whatever situation we find ourselves in.
We also have the power to make decisions about how we want our lives to look like. We all have an innate knowing about how powerful we truly are – the only thing that stops us from choosing and pursuing the lives we want to live is fear and self-doubt. Like I said earlier: Your life, your choice. If you’re not happy in your job, you have the ability to choose to do something else. If you’re in a relationship with the wrong person, you have the power to choose to move on with your life. If there’s a dream lighting a fire in your heart, you are allowed to choose to chase after it. No matter what it is that resonates with you, you have the power to CHOOSE that. In every situation you have a choice. Whether you choose what aligns with your desires or not is completely up to you, all you have to do is decide on it.
Choice is a powerful force because it literally changes lives, something that so many of us are scared of. “What if’s” plague us and keep us stuck in situations and lives that leave us feeling unsatisfied.
Making a choice means making the decision to put what you want at the forefront of your life. Conscious choices are decisions we make intentionally – they’re not the habitual choices we make on a day to day basis that we give little thought to, they’re the pivotal choices we make about what we wan’t and don’t want in our lives. Who we want to be and what we want to leave behind. You owe it to yourself to start making more conscious decisions and start steering your life in the direction you want it to go.
What in your life have you been avoiding choosing out of fear of failure? Or fear of risk? Looking back at my life so far, all the moments that have made me most excited to be alive are the ones where I chose to do something that excited me despite the fear that I felt about it. All of the things I’m most proud of in my life have been the consequence of conscious choice. Learning how to take beautiful photos was a choice I made. Hiking through the Fish River Canyon was an active decision. Someplace Wilder didn’t just begin accidentally, I chose to put my energy into starting it up. And I didn’t just stumble my way to Dubai – it was a series of conscious decisions.
Actively making choices to be, do and pursue things that make us happy means that we’re choosing to no longer simply bare witness to our lives, but be the conscious creators and experiencers of it. It means we get to have a say, and we get to take responsibility. How have you been living your life so far? Are you proud of the choices you’ve made? Do you feel like you’re an active participant in your own story? Or do you have some changes, or rather, choices to make about the way you want to live your life from here on out?
In the words of Andy Andrews, “Life itself is a privilege. But to live life to the fullest – well, that is a choice.”