Choices, making the right choices, are we making the best of the choices we’ve made?

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Life is about choices. Some we regret, some we’re proud of. Some will haunt us forever. The message: We are what we choose to be. Graham Brown

Getting back into the swing of things after a break always takes a bit of time. How many of us who couldn’t go to the gym during covid are back to the routine we were before? I’m not; gym time is taken up by other things.

Life changes and we change with it, sometimes we love the changes, and sometimes we don’t. Some things we can change and some things we can’t. Life is constantly evolving; we aren’t the only person in our life, and we must consider other people.

We may even have moments when we ask ourselves why we are working so hard. What are we trying to prove or accomplish, and what is being sacrificed? We may have other times when we ask ourselves why we aren’t working harder, and why we aren’t accomplishing more. We may think hard work will bring certain rewards, but we don’t always see the results we hoped for. Sometimes every step forward seems like a couple of steps backward, and we see others get bigger results with seemingly less work. Comparing ourselves to others is one of the biggest ways to be unhappy.

Every choice comes with a consequence. Once you make a choice, you must accept responsibility. You cannot escape the consequences of your choice, whether you like them or not. Roy T. Bennett

We need to be okay with ourselves, who we are, who we’ve been, what comes easy, and what we struggle with. There are many things about ourselves we can’t change no matter how hard we try. We have the bone structure we have, the ancestors we have, and the family we were born into, adopted by, or grew up with. We are where we are in the world, and we may be happy with where we are or want to change it. We may have many choices to make in life or only a few.

We think we will be happier with more choices but research doesn’t seem to hold this to be true. This may be why our society is not as happy as we think it should be, after all, we have so much choice, and instead of making us happy we always feel we could have and should have made a better choice, which leads to unhappiness.

There might have been a time when there was a limited pool of people to choose as our mate and we made the best choice. Now there are so many choices some people can’t choose from the array of options because what if there is a better choice? In a store, there might be too few choices, but we can be in stores where there are too many choices and we get confused. Picking the best pair of jeans out of ten works, but what about out of ten thousand?

Much of life is making a choice and then making the best of it. If we decide we are having chicken for dinner then we can make the best chicken dinner we are capable of. If we can’t choose what to make for dinner, and five-thirty rolls around without dinner started we have fewer options than we had earlier. In a pinch, we might opt for scrambled eggs and toast which will fill us up but not thought of as dinner food. If we had all afternoon to make dinner this may be a letdown, but if we just got in after a hard day, a quick easy meal instead of take-out might be a win.

Choices, choices, choices, we may be frustrated by too many, or too few choices. Life is a balancing act and we are told the better we balance it, the better our life will be. But, we see people whose life is totally out of balance and they are incredibly successful. Shouldn’t we aspire to that kind of success? Chances are we will all have some successes and failures in life. We will have to deal with how our life unfolds and make the best of it. Is there a choice we can make today that will move us in a better direction?

Look for your choices, pick the best one, then go with it. Pat Riley

May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears. Nelson Mandela

Attitude is a choice. Happiness is a choice. Optimism is a choice. Kindness is a choice. Giving is a choice. Respect is a choice. Whatever choice you make makes you. Choose wisely. Roy T. Bennett

Thank you for reading this post. Please come back and read some more. Have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.