I turn 53 tomorrow. It’s not a milestone birthday, but I still treat it as a reminder to reflect and take stock of how my life is evolving.
Who we are today is the culmination and reflection of all our past choices, conscious or unconscious.
By extension, who we will be in the future will be a reflection of our current choices.
Am I happy with my choices?
Overall, yes. There are obvious choices I wish I hadn’t made. Many felt right at the time and turned out to be unhealthy. Some were horrible and challenging in the moment, but turned out to be exactly what I needed even if I didn’t know or see it for a while.
But every choice, regardless of how I saw it at the time made me who I am today.
I haven’t arrived. I’m not perfect and never will be. I have nothing but gratitude for my life and what got me here. And it’s all a direct result of my decisions.
All we can do is make the next right decision in front of us with the information we currently possess.
I ask myself constantly, who am I being?
I have a picture and an idea of who I want to be as a person and how I want to feel. So asking that question moment-to-moment, puts me in an empowered state so I can make the best right decision in front of me.
I’m not running away from who I was previously, because as I wrote before, what we resist persists. So I embrace the current version of me and make choices that align with who I want to become.
Having an awareness of who I want to be gives me pause in the space between stimulus and response, allowing me to decide with intention, from an empowered state and with clarity.
There is no magic pill or framework that will change our lives. There is only choosing in each moment what is in alignment with who we want to be.
If we don’t like the current version of ourselves, we can decide differently.
We can decide to start something, end something, get the help we need, or to move our lives in a completely different direction.
Everything will not change instantly. For a while we will continue to experience the results of past choices.
But as we make new choices, our outer world will begin to reflect those choices back to us.
The world doesn’t give us what we want or think we deserve. It gives us the things aligned with who we are. And who we are is the direct result of our decisions.
I’ve decided to be grateful for this “one wild and precious life” and to evolve into better versions of myself, one decision at a time.
Who will you be?
Cheers,
