What would you do today if you knew you could not fail?
What would you choose today if you knew it was your last?
What would you begin today if it was your very first?
Three simple questions from three different outlooks all pointing to the same truths about the choices we make and the perspective we make them from. Every day we make a million choices and most of them we make unconsciously, we make them without regard to our options, to our goals, to their ramifications. We choose a lot of things but feel as if we have no choice about them which is patently false. If I convey nothing else in this post then I hope I convey this – in every action we not only have a choice, but our choice reflects our inner self, whether we are comfortable and happy there, whether we are uncomfortable, whether we are searching and even whether we recognize ourselves any longer.
Fine, you say, to ask philosophical questions and pose lofty answers. But take work for instance, sure I could stay home – that’s a choice, but who will pay the bills? (Please, substitute your own ‘what I don’t feel I have a choice about’ here.) Okay, I’ll take work then. Boy would I love to. (Pun intended.) Because of the practical issues, you may not feel you have a choice about going to work, but you do have a choice about how you go to work, what frame of mind you arrive with and what attitude you apply to the work before you. It sounds trivial but actually the most important choice we make every day is what perspective we take in making the choices that we make.
If you could not fail, would you plough ahead with some plans you want to make but have been hedging on? Would you barge into your boss’s office and ask for the raise or recognition or responsibilities you feel you deserve? Would you address a difficult situation in your life? Would you walk away from a dead end situation confident that you have options? Would you make entirely new plans or goals? Would you choose to do something great or even more daring, would you choose to step back and make time for yourself? Feeling that you could not fail is a perspective of strength. But it is not dependent on our strengths. In your life, of the things that have truly mattered, have you ever failed? In my own life, things do not always turn out as I had planned, but the goals I have made I have always achieved one way or another. I have not failed. And I know that, I feel that, whenever I am choosing a new goal these days.
If today were your last, already set before you as it is (you aren’t suddenly rich, a babe magnet or at an ashram in India), would you spend your time in the same way? Forwarding the same emails, surfing the internet, flipping through the TV channels? Would you spend more time with people? With people you enjoy being with? Would you have different conversations? Would you leave them with a different sense of who you are and what you bring to their lives? A clearer understanding of what brings you together? Would you let them know you care about them? And even just being around people you don’t particularly like or don’t even know, would the knowledge that they were a part of your last interactions here on earth change the nature of them? Would you see them more clearly as another fragile human, with their own stories, their own baggage weighing down their hopes and dreams? Would you take offense as easily or dismiss them as easily for things you don’t like? Would you see more clearly in them and acknowledge to them the things you identify with or even admire? This is a perspective of what value things hold in our choices and not having regrets about our choices.
My favorite choice is choosing compassion over judgment in a difficult situation. It is compassion I feel for the horrific mom freaking out at her kids in the most obnoxious way in the line at the grocery store. I always try to convey a genuine smile because, face it, I have been shades of that mom. Maybe I never called my five year old a ‘stupid fucking idiot’ for some small infraction, but I don’t know her story. And if I can ease her stress by not looking like I am judging her for the outburst, she may just soften inside enough to let it pass. That usually is what happens, to varying degrees. Only once have I gotten a truly hostile response, and that was preceded by utter confusion. Someone so removed from expecting any kindness from a stranger that they couldn’t recognize it. I backed off, but still I couldn’t bring myself to judge. If I was hit by a bus at the next crossing, I know I wouldn’t regret showing kindness over passing judgment.
What if today were your first day here? Would you start fresh? Choose a healthier lifestyle in what you eat, how you spend your free time and how you interact in your relationships? If you had no bad habits to break, would you continue the behaviors that led to them? If you held no hurts and grudges inside, would you treat others the same as you treat them now? If you felt young and fresh and new, a life ahead of you full of possibilities, would you have more optimism, more energy, and more love to give?
There is no reason we cannot begin each day with some sense of what these perspectives convey. This is the first day of the rest of your life. This may be the last day you have. You are incapable of failure if you are willing to believe in yourself. Your choices do matter. Each one of them. Make the choices that you would make, an optimistic, aware and infallible you, your true self.
And if all this seems too removed from your current perspective on life, try this; for the next two weeks make two conscious choices every morning, choose something that you will do for yourself and choose something you will do for someone else. Do that for two weeks and I have no doubt you will begin to see how much your choices matter, how much your perspective matters, how much can be gained by waking up each morning with a true sense that it is truly a New Day.
