A Choice Life through Great Choices

Life’s Choices

Jean-Paul Sartre once said, “Life is the C between B and D, Where B is birth, D is death, and C are the choices we make.” To lead a choice life, we must master the art of making great choices.

What informs those choices? What determines the outcomes of those choices? 

The product of those choices are the consequential actions and the associated response or reaction. It is the experience of life itself. So, it should stand to reason that we approach the making of choices with great skill and tact. Conscious awareness of how our choices are influenced is key. 

First and foremost, our choices are informed by the context through which we perceive the situation we chance upon.

The context sets the scene in which the choice will be made. We can think of it as the backstory. Similarly, an actor requires a scene setting back story in order to know how to relate to the other characters in a particular scene. The context in which we make the choices that we do is informed by our state of mind. This provides the lens of perception that frames the world we inhabit and the situations we chance upon moment by moment.

Beliefs are a Choice

Our state of mind is shaped by all that we hold to be true in the form of beliefs, which inform how we relate to the world at large. How tightly we hold onto those beliefs and our relationship to those thoughts and beliefs, creates the emotional temperament that we bring to the moment. This very much includes the beliefs that we maintain about ourselves. How these aspects of mind combine and interrelate determines our capacity for broad versus narrow mindedness. 

So, context determines how we choose to perceive the current situation. It informs the emotional state of mind that we bring to the moment.

Absent conscious awareness of the agency we possess in making the choices that lie before us, the default mode programming of our mind, stored in the autonomic nervous system, will direct the course of action chosen. These are the habits of mind we most typically default to as a consequence of the pre-conditioning of our mind. A mind preconditioned with wisdom will consistently make wise choices. Absent wisdom, all bets are off. The choice maker may very well prove to be our own worst enemy in the moment, for whatever we give, we invariably get. Poor choices; poor responses; poor outcomes. 

Bringing awareness to how we make our choices requires a conceptual awareness of how the mind operates. Sadly, most are very much in the dark when it comes to the magnificence of the mind’s inner workings. Few among us have any idea of the distinction between mind and brain. Nowhere along our journey through formal education is it ever touched upon. Odd really, when the point of learning, first and foremost, is to positively develop and shape the mind and the mind’s potential. 

Consequently, we tend to find ourselves principally focused on “what” choices we make. And any reflection upon the choices we make addresses only the content of the choice. The choice itself. Absent contextual awareness and conceptual understanding, it’s a virtual certainty that poor choices in one moment are repeated in another. 

This is why it is essential to us all that we understand precisely how the mind works.

And in order to do that, we must first and foremost understand why it exists in the first place. What is its reason for being? Why do we possess a mind and what are its essential needs?

The answer is simpler than you might imagine and aligns neatly with the foundational principles of universal design. 

Meeting One’s Needs

The human form has three foundational needs. 

It has the need for agency. We are free and sovereign beings entitled to make one’s own choices and to engage in acts of creation.

This aligns with the first principle upon which life is founded. Before there is something, there is nothing and in between nothing and something lies an act of creation. This is why all religions and mythologies have a creation story at their core. 

The second foundational human need is the need to be understood. This speaks to our need for connection. That is how we bear relation to and experience life. Relativity is in the contrast. For example, one can perceive light if one is also are aware of darkness. And we can only know the experience of love if we have also experienced it’s absence.

For understanding to be fully developed in us, it is essential that we develop the dual habits of mind of both empathy and compassion. Empathy is the cognitive mechanism through which we come to know what another knows and feel what another feels. Compassion is the capacity to be able to share in that experience of those thoughts and feelings. 

This aligns with the second foundational principle of universal design: all creation occurs through relationships where for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. 

And the third, the jaw-dropper, the show-stopper of human needs, the apex pinnacle expression of mind and that we most vitally need for our sustenance here on this planet is love…to love and to be loved. Love is the master emotion in that it is the only expression of energy, for that is what an emotion is – energy in motion – that has the capacity to galvanize and unite all other expressions of energy. 

This aligns with and rounds out the trinity of universal design principles: because all creation occurs through relationships, it is incumbent upon us to Do No Harm. And an absence of harm creates harmony. 

A state of harmonic resonance requires attuned choice, as though we are the conductor to the orchestration of our life. 

Wise Choices, Great Life

And so it is, that when we precondition the mind to lead from a loving disposition fashioned through an open, empathic and compassionate heart, we will find ourselves consistently making choices that place in a state of coherence with everyone and everything that we engage with. From this state of mind, we step into the flow of life having an incredibly fun and joyous time but never at the unreasonable expense of anyone or anything else.