What’s standing in your way of becoming all you want to become? In some cases, it may be the choices you don’t even realize you’re making every day. Free Choice can either be an obstacle to your success or the reason your full potential is realized this year. Learn why “responsible” use of your free choice takes grit and leads to a major upgrade in your life.
The First Two Obstacles Aren’t Too Difficult
In the last few posts, we’ve been addressing a “no-brainer” upgrade for your life. It’s an upgrade that few say “no” to IF they come to understand its true value. But there are some clear obstacles to this upgrade. These obstacles can be avoided if you are aware of them and have a plan to overcome them.
In review, here are 2 of the obstacles that stand in your way:
- Obstacle #1: Using the Wrong Definition of Success
Success goals must feel as though they fit. Goals that fit arise from within you, not from some other person’s experience. Avoid Obstacle #1 by getting rid of all the goals that you know in your heart aren’t yours — goals you’ve not personally chosen because you’re copying someone else or goals someone else has told you to set. If you’ll deliberately carve the shape of your destiny and not let circumstances or others do it for you, success is yours for the taking. - Obstacle #2: Managing Unnecessary Guilt
Guilt can hijack many good choices in our lives. What’s more, it’s a negative motivation that equips you with a pair of blinders and prevents you from seeing the real opportunities for you to be your best. Avoid Obstacle #2 by ditching unnecessary guilt and pursuing a far more worthy focus on positive choices. These are the choices custom-made for your success and real potential.
And then, there’s a third obstacle.
Overcoming Obstacle #3 Takes Some Grit
Another obstacle to your No-Brainer Life Upgrade can be quite challenging: Accepting 100% Responsibility for All Your Choices (a.k.a. Responsible Free Choice) is Obstacle #3. At first, this one seems like another obvious and simple habit that every productive citizen knows to form. But viewed from another angle, this obstacle represents a much higher level of difficulty.
Responsible Free Choice is complicated. First off, Responsible Free Choice requires you to have the courage and grit to make good choices and own it when you make bad ones. It’s easy enough to own the results of good choices. But it’s not really in our human nature to willingly accept responsibility when we choose poorly and make a total mess of things. That takes some humility, confidence and “personal grit.” Irresponsible Free Choice is way easier.
But here’s another facet of Free Choice requiring personal grit. To fully accept your responsibility for making good choices, you also have to be aware of some “semi-automatic” choices you make all day long. Some of these choices have a huge impact on your quality of life. And yet, we don’t even realize we’re making them. We aren’t just talking about choosing a persona, a style, a career or even life logistics.
Here are some examples of these semi-automatic, life-shaping choices that a “Responsible Free Choice Expert” makes on purpose:
- Choosing an emotionally intelligent response to negative circumstances. Meaning: Rather than blaming the person who said something offensive or hurtful to us for our negative emotions… we can take responsibility for our emotional reaction and choose to upgrade any negative emotions (like fear and anger) to positive emotions (like forgiveness, optimism, and joy).
- Choosing to eliminate self-made weaknesses by intentionally and correctly using God-given strengths. Meaning: We can often misuse some of our best strengths and when we do, they morph into damaging weaknesses instead. It’s our responsibility to learn the correct use of those strengths and live in them to our full potential. For example, the strength of being “planned and prepared” can be easily misused if we aren’t aware we are doing so. If this is one of your strengths, you look like a very controlling person when you are overusing it. Your responsibility is to use it correctly, while not creating an equally negative problem by throwing it out altogether and acting like it’s not a drive inside you.
- Focusing on possibilities and custom-made goals for your success, rather than focusing on past failures. Meaning: Mind your focus and make sure it’s a positive one, custom-made for your own inner design! Since we go where we focus, we must choose positive goals based on their possibilities. Past failures, the failures of others, and the potential of failure should never take the place of a positive focus.
Successful people make these types of responsible choices often and willingly. But they’ve LEARNED to do it. They’ve become AWARE of these choices. And to ensure their success, they intentionally develop habits that SUPPORT & REINFORCE these good choices.
Free Choice: An Obstacle or Part of the “No-Brainer Life Upgrade”?
And so it boils down to your choice.
Will you accept your responsibility to make ALL your choices on purpose – even the semi-automatic ones?
Or will you try to claim ignorance and continue to make some of your most damaging choices without really being aware of them?
Eliminate the Obstacles to Your Success
- Start by discovering your inner design (The Real You).
- Continue by not allowing unnecessary guilt to stand in your way.
- Accept total responsibility for all the choices you’re making. It’s the little ones that can matter the most.
Here’s help for those who want to be responsible with their free choice:
- Operating with intelligent emotions >>
- Eliminating self-made weaknesses >>
- Defining custom-made goals for your success >>