The power of choice

We had such a good discussion today.  We were talking about being true to ourselves.  Whether we are acted upon are we choose to act.  With my own children I will often hear the: well he… then follows the excuse as to why they hit, yelled at etc.. their brother or sister.  There are so many choices in a day - some that seem very minute and unimportant, others that are large, but even the choices that seem small effect us or others.  One of the many small choices we seemingly make every day is how we react to others and the things we choose to think about.

My daughter once had an assignment to write down the things she thought about at the end of the day.  As we talked about it and went over the assignment, we discussed that we choose to think about/dwell on certain things.  We don't always choose what happens to us throughout the day but we choose which things we think about.  We can choose to think about all the bad stuff that might have happened to us or we can think about all the good stuff that happened to us.  Same goes for the choices and other events of the day - we can focus on "happy thoughts"

This was an interesting concept for me that we choose our memories to some extent.  We can remember things positively or negatively.  This I think is what happens with the "snowball effect."  I often have one thing go bad in the day, then another and another and before I know it my attitude is directed negatively towards many different things and even things that aren't "bad" become viewed so.  So if we can "choose" our viewpoint then we can choose to focus on the positive things and hopefully that will snowball - leading all things to be looked at in a positive viewpoint.  As we focus on the positive we are able to enjoy some things more and limit our response to others.

It's not easy to choose our response or keep our memories flooded with good, but when we do it once, we can do it again and again.  In the past I would often think about what I could do better - even vacations I would think about what went wrong etc… but since this conversation I have been thinking about what went right - and I have found a lot more that's gone right since trying to focus on it.

So choose your dwelling points, which will help choose a response and you'll be able to choose to be more happy overall.