The choices we make

Every moment of our lives is made up of choices. Deciding whether to have a meal or not, is a choice. With choices come consequences: deciding to eat is a choice and being full afterwards is the consequence. Or perhaps you’ll decide to eat out, and at the restaurant, you meet a friend and you dine together. You chat and something in your conversation leads to another situation; if you hadn’t eaten out and met your friend, perhaps the course of your life would be different.

My favourite films are those where you see the choices the character faces, and you see the way his life would have been if he had taken the other option. Those movies bring it home to you how making a simple choice can cause a divergence in your life.

Each choice we make offers immeasurable potential; recognising the choices we make, helps us to see which one will lead us onwards in what we want from life and which one will hinder us. Just as there is immeasurable potential in each choice we make, so are there immeasurable consequences.

I like to explain it like this: our thoughts lead to our sentiments and those in turn lead to our conduct and to the actions we take, which finally lead to the outcome of our actions.

Each thought where a choice is made brings us to a certain outcome, which is the consequence of the choice. When making a choice, we should remember what to think, how to feel and what actions to take to produce the end result we desire.

This is how we should be making our choices.

We should first ask ourselves how the results of a choice will affect someone or something around us. A good movie to see that shows the consequences of the choices made by the main character is “The Butterfly Effect”. The hero had the chance to be able to go back in time or forwards into the future, to change it, but sometimes he made the situation worse through his choices.

You really have to be extremely vigilant about the choices you make, because you have to live with them and the consequences afterwards.

They can, of course, either be good, or bad, but don’t flog yourself over them, because you’re only human like the rest of us and we learn and grow from our errors.

Never forget the choices you make, never forget their consequences either.

This will help you to make better choices in the future. Listen closely to your body language; because when you feel ill at ease, it’s usually because you’re angry, or unhappy or afraid. When you are in touch with the true source, you feel happy, carefree and delightful. If the choice you make inspires that feeling of delight and there are no niggling misgivings in your mind, you will know that you have made the right decision.

It would perhaps be a good idea to reassess the situation if you have any doubts about a choice. Sleep on it before deciding if it’s the one you want to make.
Don’t forget your choices.