In truth, every choice we make is infinitely free. It’s a gift to have a free will. The decisions we make in day to day life often seem pressured and forced. We sometimes feel a lack of control in our choices because of the circumstances surrounding us or the situations we find ourselves in. So why do we imagine our freedom of choice to be so limited sometimes?
Say for example, you’ve just had a child – you’ve become a parent, it changes your decision-making process, right? Your child now becomes your top priority and you feel your hand forced in many ways. A sense of lacking control can overcome us. Instead of enjoying dinners out with friends at night or travelling the world with our significant other we need to be home with our precious newborn.
What’s important to remember is that the fulfilment we receive from our decisions is based on our values. We have chosen the value of spending time and nourishing our new child and have sacrificed other things in our social life or career, at least for the short-term anyway.
What comes with precious gifts such as a new child is responsibility. We could choose to still travel and spend a lot of time at work, but the consequence is a lack of time spent in the formative years of your child’s life. Decision-making is about weighing up whether the values you have formed hold enough significance to avoid the consequences.
So when you start to feel a sense that you’re lacking control, remember to look at your values. Are you living out the one’s you have chosen or have you gone off track out of fear of the consequences? Obviously the consequences are more real and prominent surrounding the upbringing of your child – but for single uncommitted people, there’s a big difference.
For single uncommitted people it’s ambition that gets suppressed by fear of the consequences. Often the consequences in these circumstances are emotionally built up to seem more intimidating than they actually are. That’s when we need to review our values because they are not being limited by true consequences but ones we have made up.
In these cases a change needs to be made and that often involves risk, but I tell you that the more risks you take earlier in life that are based on your values the better off you will be in the future. You will be able to understand your potential more and you will be more adaptable to change.
Make decisions based on your values, not fear of the consequences.
Always,
~ Adam, 2019
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