Reality.

Ari Weinzweig on owning the choices we make ...

You may be asking: Isn’t “free choice” already the everyday norm? After all, aren’t Americans already “free”? In theory, yes. But in practice, most of us—including me, for the first half of my life—have been trained to act as if we have no choice. We have to go to work. We have to go home. We can’t take the day off. We can’t say anything. We should go to this event. I’m not pointing fingers with any of those—I’ve said all of them many times myself. They are not, I learned the hard way, helpful in the least. While all of these pressures to conform and fit in are real—I’ve certainly felt them—the reality is that we still get to make the decision.

Understanding this reality and actually acting on it are not the same thing. Even after I realized it was an issue for me, it still took two or three years of hard inner work before I stopped behaving as if someone else was making me go to work, sit through meetings, make difficult calls, get up early, or stay up late. Gradually, though, I managed to successfully “change my mind.” Over time, I began to internalize and act on the truth that—whatever it was I was doing or not doing—I was the one deciding. Yes, there were always consequences for the choices I made, but the decision itself was still mine.

Ari's books are HERE.