I've been thinking so much about the idea that we really do get to craft, create, and choose the lives we want to live. It really is that simple. Maybe we don't get to choose what happens, but we do get to choose our response.
In the end, our lives are built around choices. Lots of them. Who we choose to partner with. What we choose to eat. How we choose to see. When we react, don't react, bend, hold on, let go, or forgive.
Here's what I think. The wisdom lives inside how we choose. We craft and create our lives through choices. Tiny ones, big ones. I deeply believe that no choice is too small or insignificant. In fact, it's the tiniest, smallest, seemingly insignificant choices that we make everyday that are often the places where we lose ourselves, but also where we can find ourselves alight. Why? Because every single choice is a mirror of our voice, a reflection of who we are. Choosing a paint color for your wall or choosing a brown couch over a red couch may feel like no big deal, but it leads to the next "no big deal" choice - the ones we make all day long in the grocery store, on the playground, in the dressing room. If we're not leaning in to hear our own voices to inform those everyday choices we make, then we're in danger of not recognizing our voice (aka our power, our light, our truth) when it comes time to make those big decisions in marriages, in work places, in the questions that keep us up at night.
Choosing takes practice.
We can practice everyday by leaning in and listening to what is calling us. Is it red paint on the wall that we really want but we're deferring to white instead - perhaps because the person we live with doesn't want red? That's ok! But lets lean in to that tiny inclination. Let's delight it with a choice. Where can we put the red? Maybe it's in a red chair. Maybe it's in a red vase. Either way, every time we see that red, we'll see a tiny mirror, a reflection of ourselves. The conscious become subconscious - nutrition for our souls. Subtle but hugely important when we add up these micro choices that essentially inform who we've chosen to be over time.
Of course, it's not really about the red chair or the red vase at all. It's about listening, hearing and recognizing our own voice, but also - perhaps most importantly - it's about choosing to delight that voice in some small (or big) way inside every possible decision that comes our way so that the essence of who we are remains fed, nurtured, validated.
Choices = who we're saying we are. What do your choice say about who you are?
And then, with all that practice in choosing well when it comes to the small stuff, we'll be ready when the really big decisions come - the ones that often define the course of our lives - we'll recognize our voice, we'll know it, we'll trust it for the big leaps, the risks. And we'll also trust it when we inevitably have to make hard choices to get us out of despair, heartbreak, and pain.
The wisdom lives inside how we choose.
