3 Choices We Can Make to Improve Our Lives

Three Choices We Can Make to Improve Our Lives is an article looking at choices either we choose or life chooses for us.

Indecision itself is a choice. If you don’t choose, the consequences of not choosing still choose you.

So you can take decisive action and be proactive about your circumstances or you can just float in the stream of life and see where you get washed up or drowned as the case may be.

Most of our choices are decided through habit and subconscious activity. However, we can make more of our choices conscious and by doing so take back a little control of the outcome we find ourselves in.

These three choices I present to you, I’d imagine are choices you most likely do not consider on a daily basis. However, I assure you that you commit to them every single day of your life. Which is what makes them so intriguing.

We are going to delve into parts of your subconscious and make them conscious.

1. Choose Your Discomfort

Initially, I wrote this as “Choose Your Pain”, but then figured, that may send people down the wrong path. Discomfort is perhaps an even more powerful word than pain. Because it’s amazing what lengths we will go to in order to avoid even minor discomfort.

In a relationship we will lie to someone for years, we’ll ignore health issues and we’ll stay in jobs too long just to avoid slightly uncomfortable conversations. We’ll literally torture ourselves and endure the pain our choices bring us, just to avoid discomfort.

It is a paradox. We endure pain so we don’t have to feel uncomfortable.

That’s a win for logic right there. It makes no sense, but this is part of being human. Avoid discomfort at all costs, no matter how much pain it’s bringing you.

I think people would rather die than have certain conversations with others. Sadly I believe this is a cause of some suicides.

Often in life, we fall into the trap of nurturing a life that makes us comfortable with the aim of eliminating everything we possibly can that makes life uncomfortable.

Now there is logic to this, obviously, comfort has its place in our lives however to achieve anything notable or worthwhile we must endure discomfort.

If you want to be great at a sport, you have to train. There will be plenty of days you don’t want to train. There will be times when you haven’t got enough time to train. You’ve got to therefore actively choose the discomfort of training no matter what. Failure to choose this discomfort will result in you not achieving what you set out to achieve.

Maybe it’s a sport, maybe it’s academia, or maybe it’s your profession, but if you don’t choose your discomfort, a different form of discomfort will choose you and the result will not be one you favor.

Maybe your discomfort is waking up at 5:00 AM every morning to prepare for the day and beat the traffic, maybe it’s having a strict diet or maybe it’s staying off the booze.

No matter what discomfort it is, what’s important is that you choose it and commit to it, knowing that as a result, you will achieve something you always wanted.

2. Choose What You Serve

I may as well tell you, there is a running theme with these choices which is either choose and be empowered or be chosen and be a victim.

We are all serving someone or something one way or another.

When we watch Netflix we are serving an international corporation. The same when we eat McDonalds. However let’s dig a bit deeper than the obvious. When you’re serving Netflix and McDonalds you’re also serving laziness, contributing to an unhealthy world and a life of instant satisfaction through addiction.

I don’t mean to paint such a negative picture, you may also point out that you are simultaneously serving joy, family memories, and fun. The point I’m making is that you are serving more than just the deep pockets of these corporations and most of what you serve is subconscious.

By your very existence, you will serve something all of the time, so why not serve something that is of benefit to you?

Could you serve gratitude, kindness, love, education, commitment, and order? Knowing that you must serve something, would you not become a servant to something that serves you also?

Perhaps start your day with a moment of gratitude, reminding yourself of why you’re happy to be alive. Perhaps this will bore you, or perhaps you won’t like it, and struggle to commit to it but at least for a change you will be serving something that serves you, by keeping you focused and in alignment with what truly matters to you.

3. Choose What Game You’re Playing

A moment of growing up for me is when I realized, everything we do is just a game. A game with techniques and strategies that all can be learned with the right application and discipline.

This hit me like a ton sack of hardcore. It left me with a heavy heart and a dullened mind.

I wanted to believe so badly, that on some magical level, what I would do is somehow intrinsically important to the universe and that I must take things super seriously because it’s my destiny or something along those lines.

But everything, no matter how seriously or professionally you take it, is just a game and if you die in this game, new players come along. There have been greater players before you and there will be great players after you.

We all end up in the graveyard so to speak and if you’re the richest person in the graveyard it won’t make a slight bit of difference.

It doesn’t matter if you’re an architect, landscaper, or professional athlete, it’s all just a game in an economy we invented to give ourselves a sense of control and importance.

We’re all just playing a part in this massive game that has no intrinsic value whatsoever. New professions are being made every day, we invent them by convincing people they have importance.

Conor McGregor a UFC fighter literally puts his life at risk in his job, yet he regularly refers to it as “the fight game”. He’s literally risking his life, there are not many plumbers or doctors doing that.

Doctors are not going to work in the hospital with their significant other thinking “I hope he doesn’t get irreversible brain damage at work today”.

Win, lose, or draw, it’s no surprise that Conor plays the game better than anyone who has ever taken part in the UFC. Even with the risk to his life, he knows it’s all a game. This guy is on his way to becoming a billionaire. He’s in the fight game, the whiskey game, and most recently the movie game. This man knows how to roll the dice and move on whatever board he chooses.

One of the most successful business coaches in Ireland, Joe Doyle also refers to what he does as a game.

Does he take it seriously, of course he does, he wants to be the best at the game. But still a game. Every challenge is just an opportunity for him to enhance his game-playing skills. Joe is in the coaching game and the property game and he’s doing fantastically well at both of them.

If you’re going to take part in a game, of course, you should take it seriously and do it with passion, otherwise, instead of you playing the game, the game will play you and instead of you being the King or the Queen you’ll just be a pawn, quivering and ready to be taken.

Having the attitude that you are playing a game in something as serious as your career will give you the resilience to persevere and triumph when others fail because they are taking it too personally.

It’s just a game, so relax, but you want to be the best at it, so get your shit together and start crushing it.

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These are the three choices. You’re going to make these choices either way, so take control of them and start making them in a way that helps you build a better life.