Looking at our Decision Path

It’s always enlightening (and I think kind of fun) to mentally walk backwards through your life and pinpoint a decision that brought you to where you are now. 

I can go back all the way to when I was 18 and I decided to take a temporary summer position at Smead Manufacturing in Hastings, MN.  Through that position I met my friend LuAnn.  A year later I rented a room in the basement of LuAnn’s home and got to know her family very well.  Her 14 year old daughter, Taryn, and her friend, Ashley, schemed away at how amazingly perfect it would be for me and Ashley’s older brother to “fall in love and live happily ever after”.  Sure enough they managed to get the two of us on the phone together one afternoon.  We talked that day for 30 minutes and then the following Sunday for 3 hours.  Our first date was a week later.  We dated for 18 months, were engaged for 6 months, and now have been married for 9 years.  So you could say the decision to work at Smead that summer was the best decision of my life.

You’ve also had pivotal decisions in your life that have been important to bringing you to where you are today.  Perhaps choosing the college you attended (or didn’t attend), the person you married, the group of friends you have, or maybe even something as seemingly simple as taking a left turn instead of a right.

To me, retracing your decision path is the ultimate proof that our lives are really in our hands.  While it would be easier to say that we were just dealt a lucky/unlucky hand in life, the truth of the matter is that we are responsible for creating our lives by the choices we make.  Our lives are basically just a summary our years of decisions.

Sometimes it is easy to feel we don’t have a choice in a decision.  It is important to remember that we always have choices; sometimes we just don’t like our options.

It’s important to remember, too, that a choice is rarely the final word.  It’s not a must that we always make the right decision the first time.  But it is a must to know when a different decision is necessary.  I love the quote by Steven D. Woodhull, “You’ve got a lot of choices.  If getting out of the bed in the morning is a chore and you’re not smiling on a regular basis, try another choice.”

Take a look at your decision path today.  Are you accepting 100% responsibility for your current livelihood?  By blaming others you are giving away your power, and by giving away your power you are not left with the power you need to make a change.
   
Becky,
Sister of Soul

Soulspiration of the Week:“Life is the sum of all your choices.” ~Albert Camus