Making choices is not an easy process. It involves evaluating the options that reality offers and giving up something, believing that what is chosen is the best option. Therefore, choices exclude. However, making choices is not only necessary, but inevitable. When you wake up, you choose to get up or lie down for a little longer. Choose to arrive at your appointment at the scheduled time or be late. Choose the clothes to wear, how to comb your hair (or not comb it), whether you will eat breakfast or fast. Choices are attitudes, actions in the world. Still, they always happen within a field of possibilities, that is, within a scenario in which some options are available – and not others. Therefore, choices are not synonymous with “will”. It is not possible, for example, to choose to have another body than the one we were born with, or to be born into another family. It is also not possible to choose to make time go back or make it pass faster. There is a concrete way for reality to happen. And it imposes itself on us and demands that we make choices based on a certain context. Still, nothing takes away from us the necessary condition to make choices. Sartre said, for example, that even on the way to hanging, the condemned will have the possibility of choosing to continue in silence or, alternatively, inform on their companions as they walk to their death. That's how it is when we get sick: we don't choose to get sick. This is a fact that happens despite us often making efforts to stay healthy. Although now, in the face of the disease, my field of possible choices will be modified, there will be many choices to be made: how I will face this event, what treatments I will or will not undertake, what will become a priority in my days given the options I have .
Making choices can be liberating
Realizing that we are making choices all the time can be distressing, but also liberating. Distressing because we realize that we are where we have placed ourselves, through the choices we have made up to this point. Therefore, being responsible for our experiences. Liberating because it is necessary to understand that we choose what we understand as the best option at a given moment in our lives. We chose with the tools and options we had, but today, when we realize that reality is different and our desire is different, we can make other choices and direct ourselves to another future. This year, a text circulated on the internet that said: “marriage is difficult; Divorce is difficult. Choose your hard one. Obesity is difficult; Being fit is difficult. Choose your hard one. Having debt is difficult; Being financially disciplined is difficult. Choose your hard one. Communicating is difficult; Not communicating is difficult. Choose your hard one. Life is never easy. It will always be difficult. But we can choose our hard one. Choose wisely.” This text means that there will be no ideal situation. There are choices and consequences. There is what we choose to accomplish in our days and the consequences we will have to deal with. It turns out that, sometimes, we can be more or less confident in choosing. In some moments, we will be clear about the reasons why we chose one path and not another. However, in other periods of life, we may find it difficult to distance ourselves from situations and evaluate them in order to be sure of the path to follow. This occurs for several reasons. At this moment, we can resort to a series of strategies to help us in the process of making choices: talking to people we trust, studying some subjects, checking what reference people used as a basis for their decisions. However, nothing will be more effective than evaluating where our choices take us: do I get closer to who I want to be when making this choice? What does it allow me to experience in the world? Do I want to live and am I willing to face the consequences that will come from this choice?
Clarity in choices
For this reason, the psychotherapy process helps to clarify who we want to be and how the choices we make build our personality. If I read certain books, watch certain films, live with certain people, I am in contact with sensations, thoughts and emotions that lead me towards some possibilities and not others. If I want to change my being, I will then need to change what I concretely experience in my relationship with reality. I need to choose to do different, to then be different. On the other hand, it is important to understand that even “not choosing” is still a choice. I can choose to let “life take me”. I can choose to stay “on the fence” and not take a stance on an issue. Still, I am taking positions in the world. Furthermore, as Sartre said, by choosing for myself, I choose for humanity. This means that, as long as there is a single person in the world who is, for example, dishonest, dishonesty will still exist and will be an option for other subjects. In the same way, if I choose to carry out my actions without evaluating the repercussions they will have on the lives of those around me, everyone around me will certainly have to deal with the reverberations of my actions. Therefore, making choices may not be easy. But it's happening all the time. For this reason, try to be clear about the reasons that make you choose one option or another. Evaluate your field of possibilities, try to look to the future and think about where your choices are taking you. Since choosing is inevitable, let us do our best. Furthermore, let us do it clearly. Because this allows us, when looking back, to return to the process that led us to make that choice. This will free us from a series of blame (which are useless) and open us to the possibility of taking responsibility for remaking choices whenever we consider it necessary. Take your responsibility. More than distressing, this can be an incredibly liberating process.
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