The Choice is Always Yours

Life is full of choices. Every decision you make paves the way for your journey. By thinking you don't have a choice, you get stuck. Stuck in this position of thinking that you can't to anything to change the situation you're in. People who often think they don't have a choice start playing the victim card. They begin to believe that they are unable to do anything about the situation, as if they were doomed from the beginning (Kaiser 240). For example, math has never been my strong suit in school. For the longest time I would barely get by in math class and walk out frustrated. I consider myself a pretty smart person, and the fact that I couldn't pick up the concepts in math really made me upset. But since I've been in advanced math classes majority of my life, naturally nobody believed me. I was certain that I was just always going to be bad at math, that no teacher, no amount of studying, and no amount of Khan Academy was going to help me. I now know that I just have to work a little bit harder than everyone else to catch up. I had to make the decision to help myself.

But things like this happen to everyone, not just people who are bad at math. Everyone has areas in their lives where they feel stuck. But even while we are in these periods, we are constantly still growing. "The goal is to look at your life as ever expanding, constantly presenting you opportunities to become more of who you really are" (Kaiser 241). If you see your life as ever expanding you will realize that in every situation you have more choices than you originally thought. I'm still in the process of trying to work this concept into my everyday thinking. Especially with school, chats, and theater. It can be scary at first to realize that your choices steer the direction your life goes. But remember there aren't any "wrong" choices, every choice you make will help you learn more about yourself and what you need. New choices=new results. 

Question: How do you decide when you need to make big choices? Do you follow your gut? Do you ask a friend?  

KAISER, SHANNON. SELF-LOVE EXPERIMENT: Fifteen Principles for Becoming More Kind, Compassionate, and... Accepting of Yourself. PENGUIN BOOKS, 2017.