The Power of Choice

Part 1

I thought it about I finally did a clear and concise piece on the Power of choice…this philosphy that I’ve been babbling on about for a good few years now. Those who know me well will know that I’ve been using the term “The Power of Choice” for a good few years now so first off let me explain how this all began.

Firstly I was chain emailed a story about a man who owned a restaurant. The story goes:

Jerry was the kind of guy you love to hate. He was always in a good mood and always had something positive to say. When someone would ask him how he was doing, he would reply, “If I were any better, I would be twins!”

He was a unique manager because he had several waiters who had followed him around from restaurant to restaurant. The reason the waiters followed Jerry was because of his attitude. He was a natural motivator. If an employee was having a bad day, Jerry was there telling the employee how to look on the positive side of the situation.

Seeing this style really made me curious, so one day I went up to Jerry and asked him, “I don’t get it! You can’t be a positive person all of the time. How do you do it?” Jerry replied, “Each morning I wake up and say to myself, ‘Jerry, you have two choices today. You can choose to be in a good mood or you can choose to be in a bad mood.’ I choose to be in a good mood. Each time something bad happens, I can choose to be a victim or I can choose to learn from it. I choose to learn from it. Every time someone comes to me complaining, I can choose to accept their complaining or I can point out the positive side of life. I choose the positive side of life.”

“Yeah, right, it’s not that easy,” I protested. “Yes, it is,” Jerry said. “Life is all about choices. When you cut away all the junk, every situation is a choice. You choose how you react to situations. You choose how people will affect your mood. You choose to be in a good mood or bad mood. The bottom line: It’s your choice how you live life.”

I reflected on what Jerry said. Soon thereafter, I left the restaurant industry to start my own business. We lost touch, but I often thought about him when I made a choice about life instead of reacting to it.

Several years later, I heard that Jerry did something you are never supposed to do in a restaurant business: he left the back door open one morning and was held up at gunpoint by three armed robbers. While trying to open the safe, his hand, shaking from nervousness, slipped off the combination. The robbers panicked and shot him. Luckily, Jerry was found relatively quickly and rushed to the local trauma center. After 18 hours of surgery and weeks of intensive care, Jerry was released from the hospital with fragments of the bullets still in his body.

I saw Jerry about six months after the accident. When I asked him how he was, he replied, “If I were any better, I’d be twins. Wanna see my scars?” I declined to see his wounds, but did ask him what had gone through his mind as the robbery took place. “The first thing that went through my mind was that I should have locked the back door,” Jerry replied. “Then, as I lay on the floor, I remembered that I had two choices: I could choose to live, or I could choose to die. I chose to live.” “Weren’t you scared? Did you lose consciousness?” I asked. Jerry continued, “The paramedics were great. They kept telling me I was going to be fine. But when they wheeled me into the emergency room and I saw the expressions on the faces of the doctors and nurses, I got really scared. In their eyes, I read, ‘He’s a dead man.’ “I knew I needed to take action.”

“What did you do?” I asked.

“Well, there was a big, burly nurse shouting questions at me,” said Jerry.

“She asked if I was allergic to anything. ‘Yes,’ I replied. The doctors and nurses stopped working as they waited for my reply. I took a deep breathe and yelled, ‘Bullets!’ Over their laughter, I told them. ‘I am choosing to live. Operate on me as if I am alive, not dead.” Jerry lived thanks to the skill of his doctors, but also because of his amazing attitude. I learned from him that every day we have the choice to live fully. Attitude, after all, is everything.

That in essence is where it all began for me. I was hooked on this concept of choice. Coincidently, about a year later, I read that very same story in one of the Chicken Soup for the Soul books and so I’m guessing that it is a true story.

So I began thinking about this concept of choice more and more. From nowhere, the expression “The Power of Choice” came to me and so I decided to write a book about it. I started searching the web to see if anyone had done anything similar and I couldn’t find anything. So to me, this became my calling and I felt like it was almost something I was destined to do and yet, something I also chose to do.

So far I’ve been working on the book for about two years and although it still needs a lot of work I am fairly confident that I can have it finished in about another year or so. I hope to have it published but whether anyone will be willing to publish it or not, is another question entirely. 😉

So what is “The power of choice”? Choice is having a clear understanding that when you are presented with any situation in life, you have the power to decide on how to react to that situation. This is kind of the first level of thinking with regards to choice and involves action and reaction.

The second level is to do with your consciousness throughout the day and what you choose to make your consciousness. So this is more and emotional level and is to do with your perception of the world. I have created a model by which you will be able to understand and implement this level within your daily life. The model is based on a cycle of creation at an emotion level and goes like this: CHOICE – PERCEPTION – CHOICE. I will elaborate more on this at a later stage.

The third level of choice is to do with changing matter and energy itself through your power of choice. This level is the last level and is the hardest one to understand and master. I Will not lie to my readers and say that I am even close to fully understanding and using this power but it is something that I’m working on and hope to eventually achieve one day. :p

So to summarise choice is utilising your mental and emotional energy to live more deliberately according to your desires rather than letting fate and circumstance control you.

In my opinion choice is the most powerful force in the Universe. Like I said I have been scouring the web and although not many people have referred to the phrase “The Power of Choice” there have been many people who have created very similar models based on their experience. An example of this is Steve Pavlina and his articles on Intention Manifestation.

So this is my first official post on the power of choice and part 2 will be coming shortly. 🙂