Right Choosing: Owning and Honing the Power of Choosing Your Way

By John R Dempsey

How Well Do Your Choices Reflect Who You Really Are and What You Really Want? How Can You Be True To Yourself In Every Choice You Make?

Consider how much of your precious and valuable time, energy and attention you devote to making diligent choices, or dealing with the consequences of choices that maybe were not so diligent.

With Right Choosing, you can know exactly where you are spending your time, energy and attention and you will finally and confidently know whether any choice you consider or need to make is appropriate for you, your values and your life.

If you value your time, energy and attention, then you must take full responsibility for managing your choices and their consequences.

You must monitor the costs and benefits of your choices, while balancing what is meaningful and important for you in all areas of your life.

You make choices about everything in every moment – choices rooted in who you are, what you need and what you want. Your choices may be deliberate, may be not, and may be a bit of both.

You make choices every day about where to commit the time, energy and attention you have available. How easily and effectively you maintain control of your circumstances and control the direction and pace of your personal growth depends on your ability to make confident, timely and appropriate choices. You can enjoy a meaningful life by being clear about what matters to you and being willing to let go of whatever is no longer important.

You can take control of your choosing and the impact it has in your life. Master control of your time, energy and attention and be absolutely clear and confident about how much you choose to give away, and how much you keep for yourself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John R Dempsey
• Release date: Mar 16, 2012
• ISBN: 9780987982810

John R Dempsey

Since 1979, John R Dempsey has been a professional consultant in public and private sector organizations in the US and Canada, developing and delivering effective educational and experiential workshops, as well as consulting and coaching with groups and individuals.John is a certified Coach U graduate, a member of the Coachville Graduate School of Coaching, and an independent Good Thinking! facilitator. He is a contributing author to the book 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life: Volume 2.John also offers e-books and e-courses, and is available for personal consulting and coaching as well as telephone, internet and live seminars.

Book preview

Right Choosing: Owning and Honing the Power of Choosing Your Way

Copyright – 2005 - 2012 – John R Dempsey

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

My Mini Manifesto: I am living the life I want to live

The Power of Choosing Your Way

The Essential Question

About Right Choosing and Right Living

Playing DICE to Balance Choosing and Living

The Optionist Model For Right Choosing

The FAR Model For Right Choosing

Your Guide to Right Choosing

My Mini Manifesto: I am the author of my destiny

The ABCs of Right Choosing

My Mini Manifesto: External obstacles are no match for my inner strength

Choosing on The Inside

Choosing the possibilities

Making your life meaningful for you

My Mini Manifesto: I Fill My Life With Possibilities

Choosing Your Way

Maintaining control of your circumstances

My Mini Manifesto: I can comfortably take care of my needs

Controlling the direction and pace of your personal growth

Managing the impact of your choosing

My Mini Manifesto: I am open to thrilling new experiences

Living With Your Choices

My Mini Manifesto: I am living fullest in the present moment

Improving and contributing

My Mini Manifesto: My best is good enough

Making It Work for You

Doing the right thing at the right time

Realizing true rewards

My Mini Manifesto: I am happy with myself. I relax and enjoy my life

Recommended Reading

My Mini Manifesto: I am living the life I want to live.

I am in charge of my life. I am the only person who determines what I do and who I become. It is up to me to choose the life I want and live it.

The life I am living is the life that I want to live. I work happily to sustain the career that I've always desired.

I have the family that I want to have. My mate is a great match for me. I am raising my children to behave the way I want them to behave.

Life is filled with situations that turn out differently than I expect. At those times, I get on my knees and pray for direction. I seek wisdom from people who are what I aspire to be and I make the necessary adjustments to my behavior.

The authority to alter the course of my life belongs to me. With a simple choice, I have the power to change where I am and where I am headed. I equip myself with the tools necessary to enact change.

Actions have consequences. Therefore, I align my actions with my desired results. When an action leads me away from my goals, I change my reaction so I can be more productive.

Today, I choose to pray for direction and reflect on where I am taking my life. I make adjustments to my behavior, even if it seems easier to change my goals than to change my behavior.

Self-Reflection Questions:

Am I living the life I want to live?

What do I need to change to achieve the life I want?

Who can help me find direction?

_____________________________________________________________

Every human has four endowments- self awareness, conscience, independent will and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom... The power to choose, to respond, to change. - Stephen R. Covey

The Power of Choosing Your Way

Happiness is fleeting only to those who cannot appreciate its natural fullness. You can choose happiness as an herb that spices any experience or feeling and thereby enhances or dulls or otherwise inspires its natural raw flavor.

There is no real need or value in separating your feelings into small compartments – in that state, they dry and wither and lose their sting. They are like flowers in that they are best experienced at full bloom and taken completely – whether good or bad, these are arbitrary anyway, the blush is soon enough off.

So happiness becomes the memory of all other feelings – it is the one that naturally and by intent carries the seeds and harvest of all others. That is its real and intended being. Happiness is not a feeling that attaches to any event or particular pattern. It is by your choice that you embrace it and keep it in you and learn to blend it as a master with all other products of your life and experience.

Recall a choice you have made where you feel the outcome was good, and ask yourself: What happened? How did I make this choice? Why was the outcome good?

Recall a choice you have made where you feel the outcome was bad, and ask yourself: What happened? How did I make this choice? Why was the outcome bad?

Now consider both the choice with a good outcome, and the choice with a bad outcome, and ask yourself:

What insights can I gain from these choices and their outcomes?

Does a bad outcome mean that the choice, or the way of choosing, was bad?

How are good/bad and expected/unexpected similar and different?

How did you choose your profession? Where you live? The shoes you’re wearing? A friend? Did you choose your parents?

The Buddhist tradition describes an 8-fold path of Understanding, Thinking, Mindfulness, Concentration, Speaking, Action, Livelihood and Effort.

Consider these observations of this Zen of choosing:

Understanding, Thinking, Mindfulness and Concentration are inner experiences, and personal;

Speaking, Action, Livelihood and Effort are outer experiences, and inter-personal;

Choosing is your gateway between the inner, personal world and the outer, inter-personal world.

Consider how choosing your way might also involve other important ideas, such as Intention, Accountability, Gratitude, Acceptance, Humility, etc.

Consider also how choosing your way plays out in the different areas of your life such as work, family, society, physical, intellectual, spiritual, etc.

_____________________________________________________________

When we acknowledge that all of life is sacred and that each act is an act of choice and therefore sacred, then life is a sacred dance lived consciously each moment. When we live at this level, we participate in the creation of a better world. - Scout Cloud Lee

The Essential Question

When you quiet the mind as in meditation and seek to notice the thoughts that arise naturally, you inevitably come to the questions: Who is thinking these thoughts and who is noticing these thoughts?

Thinking is a basic part of your choosing. As significant as thinking is to your choosing, it is still no more or less significant than the other basic parts which will be introduced and explored in this guide. And you will inevitably come to similar questions about your choosing: Who is choosing and why?

This is especially true in certain types of situations. For example:

Some parts of you remain completely baffled by some of your choices.

You experience things you believe you would never choose.

You believe you have made a particular choice, but your experiences seem to indicate otherwise.

You say and do things that are not consistent with a particular choice.

Who you are is intimately integrated with how you choose.

The essential question, then, is not who is choosing?. What matters more is how am I choosing?.

Right Choosing: Owning and Honing the Power of Choosing Your Way will give you insight into how you are choosing. Here, you can explore the world of choosing and learn to better manage how you choose.

_____________________________________________________________

"If the average person realized the power he wields over his life and destiny, he would live in a perpetual state of