Life is About Choices: Choose to Write Your Own Success Story

I have written my life story since the moment I made my first choice. My life story is all about choices. As a small child I began to make choices: red as my favorite color, pizza as my favorite food, the Wizard of Oz as my favorite movie, the Beatles as my favorite musical group.

Some of my choices were influenced by my grandmother. She introduced me to her generation of favorites, like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Cab Calloway and Perry Como. As a result, I gained an unusual appreciation for classic movies and Swing-era music.

Some choices were naturally mine, like choosing red over green, or chocolate over strawberry. But more difficult choices were over-shadowed by third party influences. I may be the primary author of my life story, but there have been many editors who shaped my thinking and behavior. I look back with regret over many of the choices I’ve made based in the beliefs, fears and behaviors of others.

For many years, my mother was the primary editor of my story. The freedom and excitement I felt over living life were too often overridden by her fear-based thinking. I then learned to make fear-based decisions, too. I started choosing caution over freedom, safety over excitement, and sadly, existence over living. These “risk-free” choices pushed people away and trapped me in a prison of loneliness-- a prison of my own choices.

I chose to believe that people wouldn’t like me if I opened-up and revealed the real me. And so I chose to hide the real me. I believed my body wasn’t good enough and so I hid that real part of me behind clothes that covered me well. I believed my needs weren’t important and so I hid my real needs, wants and desires behind a faked interest in the needs, wants and desires of others. Fear became my partner, my seducer. Fear of myself, of people, of places, of life. Most of my unhappiness has been the result of sad choices I made; all based in fear and self-doubt.

Today, I try to make positive, life-giving choices. It means taking risks and facing the possibility of being hurt. But I’d rather scrape my knee and feel alive than sit safely by a window and feel dead. I now choose to have God as my partner in writing my life story. I have given Fear his pink-slip. As my journey continues, I look back at my life story, and  I choose to build a new relationship with it. I choose to see past mistakes as forms of enlightenment. And I choose to forgive myself for the many fear-based choices that I once made. I also choose to give myself credit for the times when I made positive choices in the past.

Here and now, I pledge to be more aware of the many ways I still  choose to sabotage my own happiness by simply reacting to life. Instead, I will try to stop, breathe and think for a moment before saying or doing anything. Then I will make a choice based in positive reasoning. I will choose what I like, what I believe, what I need; who I like, who I believe in, who I need; and I will truly write my own unique and wonderfully fulfilling life story!