Life is Choice

The longer I live, the more...I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. And so it is with you... we are in charge of our Attitudes.”
- Charles R. Swindoll

These numbers seem pretty strong. And I am sure these figures severely underestimate sociology and the power of context. I do not know if you can assign accurate numbers, but I am sure life is part what happens to you and part how you react to it.

In other words- Life is Choice.

Life is filled with choices, made up of trade offs which include their own respective consequences, some of which we cannot see, only predict. The consequences in turn shape your life to some extent.

So at the most basic level, your choices affect your life.


My parents always stressed two big concepts to my brothers and I- (1) Always be a good person (2) Always use good common sense.

Both are important!

I've heard it said, "good things happen to good people" and "what goes around comes around." Neither of these are true in a literal sense, all the time. These saying hold up sometimes, but not always.

I have seen many "good" people make bad decisions that have literally ruined their life. Good people who made 1 bad decision, 1 time.

This is not to say that everything you do has life affecting consequences. But the truth is, some choices you make do have THAT big of an impact.

But remember! You do not only have a choice in big matters. You have a choice all the time. The first step to controlling your life is recognizing that you are in control of your life (at least to some degree). Remember life is part what happens to you, but also part how you react to it. How you react to life are your choices. And good decision making is crucial to a happy and successful life.

You have control of your choices. You can choose to be a victim or anything else. (-peaceful warrior).

Realize you can choose to let someone anger, annoy, or upset you or not.
You can choose to eat healthy or not, go all out or hold back, exercise or not, take drugs or not, have unprotected sex or not etc.

All life is a choice. Even reading this right now is a choice. You can choose to do what you want.
This is a very empowering and liberating idea. Imagine living under Communism with no choice at all. You would be dying to come to a Democracy, like you live in, with the options and choices before you right now.

Start appreciating your choice.

Another thing to remember is to only concern yourself with things you have control of. Do not waste time worrying about things you cannot control. This will lead to unnecessary fear, anxiety, and stress.

Your Choice (which includes how you will act) is the only thing you can control. Do not overly concern yourself with other people's decisions and actions, even if they work against you. Just decide what you want to do from this point forward.

The second step to controlling your life is realizing NOW is the moment of power. Now is the time we harvest the crops of the past and plant the seeds for the future. There is power that lies in the past or future. The past does shape where we are now. The future does shape the course of action we will take now. But, the PRESENT is the only time that you can act.

So our first two steps to controlling our life are (1) Recognizing you have a choice and (2) Realizing that Now is the only moment you are capable of acting on your choice.

You can choose to act in the future, but you are only capable of acting in the present. Concern yourself with (1) Your Power of Choice and (2) The Present Moment