My coach asked me that this week and it was
so
so
so easy to see in my clients, but really pretty painful to look at in myself.
Client 1 chooses to drink Diet Coke, but it’s because she doesn’t like water and she’s giving up sweets. Well, she still eats sweets but she knows she shouldn’t.
Client 2 chooses to stop working on her dissertation because she can’t work on it full time now that she has a job.
Client 3 chooses to eat donuts and muffins at work, but it’s because her coworker brought them in.
Client 4 chooses to stop writing her book, but it’s because her husband is home full time during the pandemic.
Client 5 chooses not to exercise after work, but that’s because his employer has been micro-managing him all day.
Client 6 chooses not to go to bed at the hour she wants, but it’s because her family likes to eat dinner late.
I will let you guess which Client I am.*
Unless we are in an extreme and unsafe situation, anything we do is because we choose to do it.
Anything we are not doing is because we are choosing not to do it.
The minute we call it a choice our brain pops up with some more or less irrelevant reason to distract from where we are completely at choice.
Cue all the extreme examples:
What if you are a 52 year old woman and want to be a first round draft choice in the NFL.
What if you want to levitate and read minds?
What if you are 61 and want to be able to do a press up handstand? **
OK brains, what would you notice is true for you, if you weren’t so busy trying to find an example that can’t work like breathing underwater.
This week –
Notice where you are choosing to do something but blaming it on something or someone else.
Notice where you are choosing not to do something, but blaming it on something or someone else.
*Definitely Client 4, but all of them resemble me at one time or another.
**That’s my dream and I’m working on it, which I choose to think is arguably cooler than already being able to do it.
