THE POWER OF CHOICE

THE POWER OF CHOICE

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom”

-Victor Frank-

Choice is the most powerful tool given to human beings by our creator. It is so critical that is not possible to take away our free will even when we make a choice that doesn’t support our wellbeing. Through the power of choice, we can change the direction of our life and even the direction of the world.  A decision we make today may impact the lives of our family, our friends, even our pets, and the planet. If we don’t take good care of our health, we are impacting the life of those that depend on us or love us. If we neglect our pets, we inflict suffering on them. If we don’t care about wasting limited resources like water and power, and don’t protect nature and wildlife, we are putting at risk the whole planet and all humanity.  This tells us how powerful we are when we make choices.

Because of technology we can send a part of us through an email or share our thoughts and beliefs through social media, blogs, and many other technological tools. I am highlighting my own example. I made the decision to help people giving them tools to alleviate suffering through emotional healing. I don’t know how many people I reach, but I made a choice of doing my part. Choices empower or disempower us.

Sometimes we don’t pay attention to our small choices because we consider them too simplistic. Nevertheless, it is crucial to remember that through small choices, we develop habits, which contribute to create behavior, which in turn have outcomes or consequences that are short term and long term. So, we better reflect about our small choices before they become habits.  What happens when we choose to make negative choices? We can hurt our family, our friends, we may put at risk our job, and in the long term many people can be wounded.

A small choice that brings a lot of pain is when youth make the choice of having  a couple of alcoholic drinks to look good in front of school peers. That small choice can become a habit, then a behavior, and the consequences can ruin his or her life. The list of small choices would be too long to enumerate them here, but smoking for the first time can end up in lung cancer, consuming drugs for the first time can in the long run end up in the psychiatric  unit of a hospital; talking back to the parents can become a habit that could later on hurt a marriage.

I would like to quote here a paragraph from the book Emotional Intelligence:

“ Good decisions require more than factual knowledge. They are made using SELF-KNOWLEDGE and emotional mastery when they are needed the most “.

The formula to make good, powerful choices can be summarized in two skills:

Self-knowledge + Emotional Mastery

We can learn self-knowledge and Emotional Mastery  through  the practice of Mindfulness meditation. Mindfulness is about awareness of our senses, our body, and our emotions. As we progress with the meditation we can investigate where our emotions come from. Once we discover the roots  of suffering, the healing process starts. It is not a magic wand; meditation takes time and commitment, but it is safe and effective. It provides us with clarity of mind, emotional balance, equanimity, and compassion. Those skills are required to make powerful, wise choices.

I would like to recommend my readers the book “Emotional Intelligence 2.0 . “ It’s an interesting book that teaches us what Emotional Intelligence is, and how we can improve it through a series of exercises. It is possible to take a test to measure the level of emotional intelligence, and you can take it online at no cost. As you progress with the exercises you can continue measuring your progress. The book explains that the communication between your emotional intelligence and rational brain is the physical source of emotional intelligence.

We do need emotional intelligence to better understand who we are and why we react in certain ways in the presence of emotions such as anger, sadness, resentment, etc.

Learning to manage our emotions is a powerful tool to make wise choices. Emotions can create turbulence in our minds and rush us into decisions we may regret later. Strong emotions don’t help us make the best choices because they tend to deprive us of the necessary clarity of mind. We need to be careful to create habits that help us in tough moments.

One of my favorite parables is about how our choices are fed through our emotions. It is the parable of the two wolfs . I am conscious that It is a well-known parable but at risk of being repetitive I am sharing it down here, to better explain the importance of small choices in our lives.

A Cherokee Indian Chief was teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going inside me”, he said to the boy. “It is a fight between two wolves. One is evil – full of anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.”

“The other is good. His heart is filled with joy, serenity, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, humility, compassion, and love.”

The same fight is going inside of you, and inside every person in the world. The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?” The old man replied, “The one you feed”.

The reason I choose to share this parable is because our daily small choices are the ones that feed one of the wolfs we have inside. They are not small choices. Every time we take a decision, we are feeding one of the wolves. We will develop positive or negative habits according to our daily choices, and those choices are usually based on our emotional state.

Another fascinating parable is about Cain and Abel. Cain was a farmer and Abel a shepherd, both of them had everything needed to be happy. Both had inside the two wolves. Cain, day by day, maybe without being completely aware, started to  feed the  evil wolf with  emotions of jealousy, anger, and envy. Meanwhile, Abel was feeding the good wolf with kindness and humility. The small choices that Cain made, ended up in a tragedy with a castastrophic outcome and negative long-term consequences that impacted not only his life but the life of generations to come.

Those parables teach us the importance of being very aware of our thoughts and emotions. All things start with a thought, the though becomes an emotion, and then translate into an action.

This is the last article of the series of Powers Developed Through Mindfulness Meditation. Don’t miss our next blog on Friday December 6th. www.ocipeace.org

If you would like to write an article to be published on this blog, or want to suggest a theme to write about please email to gladys.gonzalez@ocipeace.org