Let’s examine the idea of choice. In order for you to chose something – be that a dress to wear, a bicycle to buy, a sports event to attend, or what you want to think about – before you can make a choice, you have to think about the merits of your subject, look at all your options and then chose the option that works best for you.
Choice is a privilege and a freedom and it is judged by you, on an individual basis guided by your experiences and your preferences. Choice is an aspect of the exercise of one of your greatest capabilities, free will. Webster defines choice as the ability voluntarily to decide to perform one of several possible acts or to avoid action entirely. An ethical choice involves ascribing qualities such as right or wrong, good or bad, better or worse to alternatives.
What I’d like to point out to you is that this is one area where you are completely in charge. Yes, others might try to influence your decision, but you are the only one who can make that decision, so you are completely in charge of choosing.
I’d love for you to choose to Be the Change you want to see in your life. The issues of being that change involve how you exercise your choice. I don’t believe that anyone should be manipulated or coerced into making a choice. Instead, I believe in laying out a smorgasbord of options for you and trusting that you will pick the one that serves you best today.
When I look back across my life, I recognize that I make very different choices than I did in days gone by, and I also recognize that the choices I made earlier were the precise stepping stones that led me to make today’s choices. I learned that you cannot chose wrongly because every decision you make serves you well in some way or another.
If you truly want to Be the Change in your life, you will become somewhat introspective. Looking within where your mind lives, you will begin to familiarize yourself with its methodology, it’s wisdom, and its propensities. You will observe its mental habits and its snap judgments. You’ll become familiar with its memories. You will observe how its feelings get triggered off. All of these things regarding your mind – methodology, wisdom, propensity, habit, judgment, feeling and memory – all of them involve choice.
Once you quiet yourself down enough to observe the workings of your mind, its at this point that you can begin to exercise choice. You exercised choice when you developed what’s in there now. You may not have been aware that you exercised choice at the time you were exercising it, but you did. So now that you have benchmarked where you are currently in terms of mind content and concept, you can slowly begin to make different choices.
Your new choices will form new habits, new ways of thinking. And because your mind is causative – i.e., your thinking creates your experiences – you will begin to manifest new experiences and they will match precisely the new choices you are making. This is the way you Be the Change you wish to see in your life. Choose well. Your ongoing life depends on your choices.
Maria Khalifé is a renown, international business woman. Beginning in the hospitality industry, with a strong passion for business development, Khalifé developed the first and only Arabic cooking magazine in the Middle East called The Soufra Daimeh Magazine, and it was followed by an extremely popular television show of the same name. Her passion for food and her experience in the media field led her to develop and win international claim for over 70 cookbooks. Two of them – Middle Eastern Cookbook & The Mezze Cookbook have won many awards for their sumptuous and delicious recipes.
Going beyond her television and radio career, she expanded her life purpose to include helping others to live a masterful, successful life led by her own example and accomplishments. In 2008, she created The Change Coaching Institute (CCI). At CCI, those who wish to accelerate their growth on The Path, or to foster a new career for themselves by becoming a Change Coach, learn universal, spiritual principles to reach maximum potential through the discovery of a true dynamic and authentic self.