Choices

In my last post I talked about how much better I felt choosing to make someone who hurt me less important (among other things).

I am so delighted to be learning about choices! I feel a lot of pressure, often, because of what I think is expected of me. I know it's really just me expecting too much of myself, but that doesn't solve the problem. Feeling that I can choose to think about this or that, or feel a certain feeling, or take a particular action - now that's new!

Crazy, huh!

I have often felt I am the gatekeeper of the world. I have a very big responsibility, obviously, to keep everyone safe and happy. I think it is my job to protect people from pain, to save them from their hurt, and to please them. Maybe that comes from stuff in my childhood - of course stuff from my past informs my now. But right now I want to focus on choices.

I can choose. Other people can choose. There might be right and wrong, and maybe I believe in a right or wrong more than some others. I am afraid of getting hurt, and I have made a lot of choices to protect myself, and people around me, from getting hurt. But getting hurt is not that big a deal anymore. It used to be, when I was a child, but now I'm grown up. I can choose to be ok with getting hurt.

I don't have to carry around hurt feelings forever. Or anger or unforgiveness. I can feel hurt, angry, and unforgiving, but it's not a commitment. I am committed, instead, to being happy.

I have all the things I need, and I am getting guidance and support to learn how to give myself this wonderful gift.

And I have heard a million times that people choose to be happy, or not. But I thought it was a moment, a beat where you felt sad or angry and told yourself to snap out of it. Now I think differently.

Now I think choosing to be happy is recognizing that choices lie everywhere, making the ones that take care of me, and letting others make their own. I can let others take their own path, even the wrong path, because it's their choice to make. And whatever path I choose to walk, it is my choice. Mine. So I want to spend my time and my energy doing what makes me happy, not what I think will protect me or someone else from hurt, or what will please someone else.

This is my life to live. And that is yours. Enjoy it.