Your Choices to Make

Everything in life has a price. When we work, we pay for the income we get in the time we spend away from our family or from the other activities we love to do. When we stay home to care for our babies, we exchange money for the experience of being with our children so we can teach them what we know. Nothing in life is free. And this is, perhaps, one of the hardest things for people to wrap their heads around.

When we choose one path, we walk away from all the other potential roads we could take. Partnering is a choice. Parenting is a choice. Home ownership, going into consumer debt, and preparing for the future are all choices. Some of our choices help us move closer to what we really, really want. Some move us further away. But until we accept that it is WE who are making the choices, we can’t feel that sense of control, of power, of strength, we want.

No athlete comes to prominence without making the choice to practice. No musician achieves proficiency or acclaim without making the choice to skip something else to make the time to get better at his or her instrument. To become a good painter, you must paint. To become a poet, you must write. To become good with your money, you must manage it daily.

If what you’re doing with your life energy isn’t working for you now, clearly you need to make different choices. If you haven’t really decided what it is you want – I mean really, really want – that has to be step one.

So many people want it all, and they want it all at the same time. You can’t have the student loans, the mortgage payment, the big belly, the car payment and eat out three times a week all at the same time. You have to choose which one is most important, have that and then choose again. I believe you can have it all over time, but you have to choose and focus to achieve anything at all.

Some of us are greedy for experiences. Go ahead. Travel, eat out, go to concerts, play as much as you like. But you can’t have all that play and the stability of the person who prioritizes putting down roots. If you want to own a home, do you want it more or less than a vacation every year? If you want to start a family, do you want it more or less than a snappy wardrobe or a new car every three years?

Your life is a series of habits, things you’ve become used to doing. If you want to have a different outcome, you may have to change some of your habits. If you choose to get your student loans paid off, you may have to work a second job or eliminate unnecessary spending until you get what you want: to have those student loans gone so you can focus on the future (instead of paying for the past.)

Often when people look at the choices they must make, they focus on what they must give up. I have always kicked my own ass and turned my face to what it is I’m trying to achieve. In making the choices I make, it isn’t about what I won’t be able to have. I consciously choose to focus on what it is that I will be able to have.

Learning to make choices means growing up. Giving up things that are less important in the long term to achieve something you really, really want is a sign of focus and maturity.  So do you know what you really, really want?