Choosing Choice

With so many changes and transitions happening in my life in the past few months there were a lot of times when I felt like dissolving into a puddle on the ground.  I felt so out of control of my life and powerless as external forces moved the trajectory of my life around.  I felt like I was on a string being yanked every which way and I had no choice but to follow.  Somewhere in the midst of all the craziness I remembered this rhyme by Dr. Seuss that I had seen somewhere on the internet months before:

You have brains in your head. 

You have feet in your shoes. 

You can steer yourself any direction you choose. 

You're on your own. 

And you know what you know. 

And YOU are the one who'll decide where to go

Just reading this made me feel so calm.  Try saying this to yourself replacing the word "you" with "I".  Don't you feel better?  It made me reflect back on all of the times I let other people make choices for me when I believed I had no choice and all of the times I stood up and made my own choices for my life and where it took me.  We are all so responsible for our own lives.  We are as responsible for the choice of believing we are powerless and let other choose for us as we are for the choice of taking charge of our own lives and living a deliberate life where we choose our own paths.  Either way you are responsible for the outcome.  Be powerful or powerless, it is your choice but it IS a choice.  It is easy to slip between the spectrum of the two back and forth, and I think that this is how most people live their lives.  It's certainly what I used to do.  But I just can't afford to do that anymore, the stakes are higher now and I just can't risk my future in anyones hands but my own.  I get to choose where I go and what I do and who I spend my time with.  And if I make a bad decision then the responsibility is on me and I can't blame it on anyone but myself.  And if I make a good decision then I can own it and not say "well I was lucky...".  I know that my life is exactly the way it is because of my own doing.  Because of this somehow it makes me able to be as proud of my bad decisions as I am of my good decisions.  It feels good to own up to something and take responsibility, fixing it if it is bad or reveling in it if it is good.

So there's that.  Do me a favor, next time you feel helpless say this Dr. Seuss thing to yourself.  See if you can find a choice for change in your life where you didn't think you had one before.  When you do discover the power you have in your own life you will feel amazing, I promise.  Choose Choice.