Wish you had a superpower? Invisibility? Flight? Super strength?
The ability to create a better life?
Oh wait, you’ve already got that one.
It’s called choice.
We often overlook the power of our ability to choose. Sure, we think about what restaurant to grab dinner from, what movie to watch, and what clothes to wear. Maybe the choice is bigger as we debate moving cities, taking a new job, or ditching that partner at the gas station never to return. But these decisions are our obvious choices, that’s not to say that they’re easy, but we know we’re choosing as we do it.
These are not the choices I’m talking about here. These are choices that are usually made consciously; we are very much aware that we are making a decision. There’s far more that we are at choice over than most people realize and it’s these choices that hold great power over our life experience. The greatest power lies not in the ‘what to wear’ or ‘where to live’ decisions that we make, but in the not-so-obvious choices that shape the very fabric of our life experience.
Your ability to choose is your superpower, even if doesn’t seem as sexy as invisibility… at first glance.
The Not-So-Obvious Choices
In addition to the ‘to egg or to cereal?’ daily dilemma, you’re also making a lot of other choices every day. You’re choosing:
- What you pay attention to
- How you think
- How you feel
- How you react
- How you show up
- The actions that you take
- The words you use
- What you believe
- The meaning you give to what happens
- The story you tell yourself about it all
Your Choice Is Your Superpower
Your Choices Create Your Reality
Everything is energy. Let’s start there (don’t worry I’ll keep it brief). At the subatomic level, that’s all it is, energy. There is an energy field that connects everything, including us. Matter itself is only energy moving at a very slow vibration. Anything and everything that exists in the physical world as ‘matter’ has come into being from this energy field.
Most importantly for your choices: Every thought, every emotion, every intention, every belief… it all has an energetic signature. Every action you take and every word that you utter carries with it an energetic vibration.
Each of these things creates changes not just for your energetic state but for the surrounding energetic field. This energetic field is your reality.
Your current life experience is no more and no less than the reflection of your energetic state.
Your choices create your energetic state. Your energetic state creates your reality. Ergo your choices create your reality.
Your Choices Create Your Experience of Life
Not ready to take the leap to believe in that logic yet? That’s OK. You get to choose what you believe.
If it’s too much to accept the idea of energetic states and reality being reflections of energetic states, then let’s look at it from another perspective, and how your choices create your experience of life.
Your not-so-obvious choices
- What you pay attention to
- How you think
- How you feel
- How you react
- The words you use
- What you believe
- The meaning you give to what happens
- The story you tell yourself about it all
…create your subjective experience of it all. Life is not the objective reality you think, it’s the subjective interpretation you have made through your choices. Your experience of any situation or circumstance is not imposed on you, it is created by how you perceive and react to it.
Even when you feel like you have no control or choice, choices are still being made in how you react, interpret, and respond. The meaning you assign to any of it and the story you tell yourself about it all is the way you will then experience it.
These choices thus affect your mental, emotional, psychological, and physical health. And you can’t deny the impact those things have on your experience of life.
The Power of Choice
Whether you take the view that your choices create your energetic state and thus your reality, or the view that your choices create your experience of life, (or both), the point remains the same.
Your Choices = Your Life.
This is the gift we all possess, without having to lift a finger to do anything about it. This is your superpower. And it’s working all day every day.
You are already using your power; you can’t ever not be choosing.
Maybe you just don’t know how yet; you’re not choosing these things consciously.
The Problem: Unconscious Choices
Most of what you’re thinking, feeling, believing, paying attention to, etc. is happening on autopilot.
And when I say most, it’s most. Up to 95% of your responses/reactions/behaviors are happening without your conscious direction. Your subconscious is running the show.
You are always choosing but you’re not always consciously choosing.
This is fine if the reality you’re creating is great. If your autopilot life experience is everything you could hope for, then congrats! If not, which is more likely, and your life experience isn’t quite what you would like it to be, then you are powerfully choosing what you don’t want.
Your superpower hasn’t been switched off; you don’t have a defective setting.
You just need to introduce some conscious awareness into your choices and direct them towards what you do want.
“Until you can make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
Carl Jung.
The Solution: Conscious Choices
Start paying attention to your not-so-obvious choices.
Become aware of how you are in fact choosing these things.
Recognize the ability you possess to change them.
Start choosing intentionally.
Watch as life changes.
Final Thoughts
Do not underestimate the power you already possess.
Your ability to choose is your ability to create the life and future you desire.