The Power of Choice

This year I didn’t come up with a set of resolutions. Instead, I reflected on what I’ve learned about how I want to show up — for myself, for my daughters, in my life.

We often go through our days, and particularly the more difficult ones — such as when our kids are struggling — with a sense of events happening to us, and of desperately trying to change the external circumstances so that we can shift the uncomfortable feelings: fear, sadness, guilt, shame. These feelings make drawing on our internal resources and responding from wisdom so difficult.

We often interpret the present through stories from the past, and through beliefs that have penetrated our subconscious so insidiously that we rarely even think to question them. It is this conditioning that traps us into making meaning of the situations that touch us with blinkered vision.

So I came up with a word for myself this year: “choice.”

It’s such a powerful word. It is the opposite of blame, of victimhood, of struggle, of fear. It is a word that reminds us of our innate freedom — of our strength, of our ability to shift, with our minds and with our bodies, the meaning we give to the events in our lives.

We can always choose. We can stop. We can take a breath. We can decide to start again, to be open to the possibility that there are other interpretations. This may feel uncomfortable at first, because seeing our world through the evidence of the past — of the way things were, or should be — gave us a sense of certainty, no matter how misguided or limiting.

I didn’t realize how deeply I would need that word until a stormy night in New York just after Christmas. I was visiting my daughter, and things were the darkest I’d seen them. 

As I left her apartment and walked into the falling snow, I realized how often I have tried to find solace and stability on this ground built on false certainty, on the assumption that we can control the outside forces and conditions. For me, this is an old belief, based on old conditioning and fear. But deep down, I was aware that this was a lie. The truth is that the solid ground I was seeking was not under my feet, but within me. It was a sense that even when I am at the edge of a cliff, I can let go — let myself drop into the void — and I will be caught, and set down on the ground.

I knew I had a choice. I could see the situation through the lens of desperation and fear, or I could let go and trust that even this was part of a process — of her journey — that was beyond my capacity to comprehend. So I found this solid ground within myself. I handed her life back to her. I leaned into divine order. And after a series of events we never could have imagined, she made her way a few weeks later — with her agency and autonomy intact — to a place of healing.

So I invite you to also use “choice” as a touchstone — challenging yourself to question the comfortable beliefs, the old way of seeing things, and expand toward possibility — and yes, sometimes even miracles.