IN WORK & LIFE YOU ALWAYS HAVE A CHOICE

Posted on January 25, 2015 by Lynda Pedley MBA, One of Thousands of Career Coaches on Noomii.

It is said that everything can be taken from a person but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – choice. To choose your own way with clarity of purpose every hour offers the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determines whether you will or will not submit to those powers which threaten to rob you of yourself.

To exercise your freedom to choose, you need to shift your thinking from obligation to preference – from automatic to purposeful – thus, freeing you to choose actions that support your deepest intentions. This means being fully aware in each moment and consciously choosing a course of action that is aligned with your intentions of how and who you want to be. The more you are aware of and can resist acting on your beliefs about duty, the more you will retain your personal power and the ability to choose a purposeful course of action that is aligned with what matters most to you and with who you want to be.

To help you make this shift from obligation to preference, I offer this invitation: at any time throughout the day when you find yourself thinking or saying “I have to….” take the following steps:
1. pause in that moment and consciously change that thought or statement to “I choose to…”
2. notice what your internal dialogue is in this moment
3. notice what feelings/emotions arise
4. notice what sensations you experience in your body
5. make a conscious non-judgmental choice about what you actually do next and proceed with your day.

Notice what happens in taking these steps to shift from obligation to preference. Maybe nothing will change and you will proceed with whatever you had set out to do. That’s ok. Maybe you will choose to do something different. That’s ok too. Notice how your choice, whatever it is, changes the way you proceed and how you view whatever you choose to do.