Are your hidden choices holding you back from achieving happiness and success?

4 Ways That We Sabotage Ourselves Without Even Knowing It

We are all probably pretty familiar at this point with some of the choices that are considered vital if you want to live a long, healthy and financially secure life. Articles abound about the correct choices to make with your food, your exercise, your supplements, your medications, your entertainment, your vacations, your education, your information, your social media, your style, your politics, your savings, your investments — right down to the correct way to sit at your desk. 

Every minute of every day is filled with choices — but what about the choices that most of us forget that we are even making? Choices, for example, that might make or break our level of resilience when faced with great challenge? Choices that have the true power to propel us forward in spite of adversity — or leave us feeling paralyzed by fear and overcome with anxiety? 

If we are truly committed to our own success and happiness, the time has come to venture bravely into this hidden jungle of our own decisions. We need to climb out of our individual bottles and finally read what is outside on the labels that we have created. 

I believe that it’s the choices that we are not even aware that we are making that are defining who we become, how successful we become and how joyously we live our days along our journey. 

So what are some of these hidden choices that we don’t realize that we are making? Recognize any of these?

1. Choosing to believe that our experiences have left us flawed. Many of the most successful people in the world have lived through great challenge, heartache, poverty, injury and in some cases literal abuse. These details are the gems that make their stories so rich and so inspiring. It’s not in spite of these obstacles that they became great. It’s thanks to the greatness that these challenges evoked that they discovered just how powerfully they already were. The greatness was there, waiting to be unleashed. A reluctant hero is still a hero. How many of us doubt our own worthiness because we choose to believe that something in our past left us scarred? Can’t we choose to believe that these scars cry out that we were mightier than the boulders that tried to bring us down? What if we choose to use these experiences as proof of our ability to be resilient no matter what? What if we use these experiences as reasons to be bold? Are there experiences in your own life that you could choose to look at from a new perspective? Could you choose to give yourself credit instead of choosing shame and doubt? 
2. Choosing to define ourselves as less. How often have you caught yourself thinking or saying: “My challenge is _____” or “Every time I get in that kind of situation, I ____” or “that’s just how I’m wired” or “I just can’t help myself” or “I tend to _____” ?  How often have you directed the “what’s wrong with that picture” mode toward yourself (or others)? How often have you chosen to buy into a definition of yourself that may not even be accurate — and that in most cases is definitely not empowering? You have grown to believe that you are shy. Aren’t you simply someone who prefers to first observe and analyze? Those can be great qualities unless you have been told that they are the qualities that are holding you back. I went through decades believing that I was afraid of heights. For the longest time, I chose to buy into that belief. My body supported me whole heartedly. I had blatant physical symptoms of fear of heights — panic, tears, anxiety, dizziness. A year ago, I went to an adventure retreat. I realized that one of the challenges involved facing extreme heights. The night before it was to be my turn to face this challenge, I was terrified. I lay in my bed certain that I would embarrass myself by falling completely apart. And then I did something different with my mindset. I began to play with my thoughts. I remembered how my youngest daughter had always been so fearless — and yet people called her “mini me”. I was so different from her when it came to heights so I poked at the thought for a moment and mused, “what if I’m NOT different?” What if I have mistakenly believed that I am afraid of heights when actually I am not? What if the churning that I feel is actually exhilaration? I thought of how much I love watching the birds fly up high. It must be a wonderful feeling. I asked myself if I might possibly be able to find joy and excitement at great heights. What would it look like if I have been wrong all of this time? What if I choose to believe that I’m like my daughter and actually love being up high? I fell asleep with that thought and awoke feeling nervous but committed to this foreign mindset. I would CHOOSE to believe that I actually loved these height challenges. The first challenge was simply a rock wall yet I would have been terrified in the past. Once I deliberately commanded my mind to focus in the new direction, not only did I master that wall in record time, I literally blew through the much more demanding challenges on the course. At the end, when I confided to my group that until that day, I had chosen to be terrified of heights, every single jaw dropped. Every single person assumed that I was an experienced climber and that’s why I had mastered the challenges “so easily”. So what are you choosing to believe about yourself? What do you assume is real that may not “in a different reality” be real at all?
3. Choosing to “should” all over yourself and others. Nothing takes away our own power faster than believing that everything else around us “should” be a certain way in order for us to feel ok — much less successful and happy. The moment that we choose to put circumstances and other people into our driver seat, we doom ourselves to a life of living in reactive mode. Clarity is power so even “failures” and things that we “don’t like” ultimately serve us by helping us to create that which we do want. When you do encounter a situation that you feel “should” be different, instead of fuming, try stopping for a moment and remember one word: temporary. Then look for clues within the “should storm”. Knowing what you don’t want makes it easier to identify what you do want. Knowing ways not to do something creates better ideas that can be applied next time.  Evidence continues to mount supporting that what you focus on, expands. Choose to adopt the perspective going forward that if you don’t see the results that you want, you simply haven’t gotten them yet. 
4. Choosing to give up the big dreams in your life. Have you ever noticed that the people who seem to stay young always seem to be asking “what’s next?” Many of us look back on our lives and wistfully remember the “better times” when we felt like we had our “whole life ahead of us”? Isn’t it actually more correct to say that we felt so great because we believed that we could dream big dreams? We chose to dream about our future? To dream about the life that we would create for ourselves and about the legacy that we would leave upon the world. At one point in our life, we really believed that we could achieve anything that we put our minds to. When we started to slow down was when we began agreeing to choose to think differently. We began to wait to commit to a dream until we felt like we could specifically map out how we would achieve it. We began to eliminate the dreams that “common logic” convinced us were unrealistic and unnecessary. We carved and hacked and carved and hacked until many of us were simply left choosing only to dream the dream of paying our bills with something left over for retirement.  We choose to give up our own ability to give our life purpose and meaning. 

Today, as you weave your way through your day, choose to look at your very existence like a candy store full of choices. There are the favorite candies that sit on the front shelves for all to see. You can content yourself with those — OR, you can choose to venture a bit deeper and explore some of the more unusual flavors. No disrespect to the wonderful mother of Forrest Gump— I say, this time around, put together your OWN box of candies. That way, you most certainly get to choose which flavors you get to savor.