The Power to Choose

The Power to Choose

A Sixty-Word SZEN Story*:

The name of the article that Bob was quoting from was “Truth and Consequences.” It was written by a famous self-help guru who taught his followers that success is totally possible, but it always has a price. It’s just that most people choose not to pay it.” Bob’s interpretation was simple: People want happiness for free, but it never is.

And more…

We, as a society, have become excellent shoppers. The internet opens our eyes to infinite possibilities. We can pick and choose and ultimately buy virtually anything we want as long as we can meet the price. This formula is easy to understand and considerably simplified when it comes to using the currency DuJour. It’s more complicated however when money alone can’t buy our dreams. According to American psychotherapist Sheldon B. Kopp, people are afraid to make difficult choices because of their current circumstances but he asserts: “You’re pretty much free to do whatever you like. You need only face the circumstances.”

This is about choices – The freedom to choose what we want and being willing to pay the price to get there versus talking ourselves out of a particular decision for fear of the repercussions. The philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre observed that there’s a secret comfort in telling ourselves we have no options rather than to face the consequences. Like Bob in our story today, he understood that essentially, there are always choices but they’re not free. The expressions, “pay the piper,” “no free lunch,” and “everything has a price,” are born from this sentiment.

We live in a reality where both time is precious, and our choices are infinite. Reconciling how to invest the time we have to achieve what we want is only a matter of trade-offs. This is where many people get stymied. Even if we see a path to a good option, what we have and where we are right now feels good and it’s so easy to stay there. In this framework, status quo becomes the default choice fueled by our own rationalizations and bias. That being said, the answer to breaking free of any situation we’re in, is to visualize a new situation and envision its manifestation. Then move toward it. Yes, there will be tolls and energy to spend on the way there but as long as we are prepared to face the consequences we will arrive where we always wanted to be.

* Always 60 words. No more, no less.

Szenippet: We live by the stories we tell ourselves and nothing new happens until we change up the characters, or scenery and dialogue in our story. Begin with a happy ending point-of-view and move toward it.