What Do You Choose Today?

For the last couple of weeks, we have been building on the idea of expressing freedom in your life. How to tell whether you have freedom in the spiritual sense of being independent from your worst habits, how to turn those free intentions into actions. You might think of this week as the conclusion of our mini trilogy (that’s a lower-case trilogy, not our Trilogy healing method).

The question of the day, then: how do you make your daily choices?

I’m not talking about what sort of coffee you choose each morning or where you eat dinner. I’m talking about the big-picture stuff. The goals that guide the direction of your life—if only just a little each day. I’ll assume that you’ve been following us the last couple of weeks, as our discussion for today builds on those strategies.

One of the greatest obstacles to a truly meaningful, purposeful life is inertia. Speaking for myself, the biggest draw to temptation in my own life has been simple boredom. When there’s a crisis at hand, or when you reach a moment of resolution in life, then most people will show up. It’s a little way down the road that things get difficult. Making a choice is the easy part, but how do you stick to it day after day, once the initial excitement has faded?

Personally, I think it is similar to what they teach in groups like Alcoholics Anonymous. We may not all have such self-destructive habits, but we do all have tendencies that conflict with our best life. More than anything, fighting those tendencies is a matter of humility and discipline. In these kinds of groups, they talk a lot about focusing on the things you can control, accepting the things you can’t, and taking each day as it comes. All good advice. If I could add one thing to it, it would be to make sure that your daily life is rooted in the truth.

Now, that’s easier said than done. Speaking for myself, I never had much long-term success in changing the way I lived my life, until I was driven to throw all my old beliefs out the window and start over from scratch. It was only once I’d built a faith of my own, supported by my own intellect and research, that it became strong enough to build a life on.

One more thing, and if you’ve been with me for awhile, you know what’s coming. The choices you commit to will determine the daily experience you get. That’s why people who focus on money generally end up dissatisfied even if they succeed, while others who focus on love can find meaning and fulfillment even in hard times. Ultimately, this choice has to be your own, but I’ve found nothing better than living in love in the present moment. The present is all you can really change, anyway, and nothing keeps you more humble.

Have a blessed, wonderful day!

Dr. Alex Loyd