This is the Life Your Beliefs & Actions Built

Many tend to think of their lives as a series of isolated events they deal with as they appear. Yet, in truth, our life stories are the result of a series of choices - many of those choices being made quietly, repeatedly, and without much awareness.

The moment you are in right now did not arrive by chance. It was shaped by what you said yes to yesterday and the day before that and the day before that, and so on…. This includes what you avoided along with what you believed was possible - or not. Our choice is to live consciously or not. To take responsibility for where we are as well as where we aren’t.

This is not about blame or “fault.” It is meant simply as a realization of the power of choice – from awareness or otherwise. When we recognize that our current reality is the result of earlier inner choices - often made under stress - something important shifts. The future stops feeling abstract and out of our control and agency returns.

We begin to see the natural flow of the choices we make and come to understand the often subtle yet profound impact of any one choice. It also shows us that we can make any further choices we want – while also recognizing most of the consequences of those choices – knowing there will be others we have no clue about – yet!

Our leadership is not about controlling outcomes. It is about taking responsibility for orientation. It is about us acknowledging every decision is multi-layered. As an example, my decision to move back to the States from a Caribbean island after 10 years, meant coming back to incoming storms of 10-12 inches of snow. It meant digging out my car.

No, not one of those realities was a part of the decision-making process. Neither cold-weather reality was chosen consciously. However, they are both a byproduct of a decision I made to come back, to take my work across the USA, to become a Clinical Instructor at a medical school and more.

When you begin to see your life as authored rather than inherited, you stop waiting for permission. You stop assuming things will change on their own. You become available for a different kind of conversation - with yourself and with the world. “If I am free to make any decisions I want, what are the consequences, what are the changes that I can expect, am I ready to deal with unforeseen changes if and when they show up?” It also says, is the change I want to make, the shift I am called to, so freeing? Valuable? Necessary? Wanted? That whatever the expected and unexpected consequences, they will be well worth it?

This newsletter is not asking you to do more. It is asking you to see more clearly, knowing your life is a gift beyond words that you are giving yourself…

That clarity, once it arrives, is difficult to ignore.