Yesterday I talked about how it is vital to take responsibility for your life. Often people who have not given this idea a lot of thought will say that they do not have a choice in how they react to a given situation. A few years ago I was in that very same position. The thing is, you always have a choice, it’s just that sometimes you have responded the same way so many times, that it becomes automatic.
After you run a certain pattern a whole bunch of times, you become conditioned to running that pattern again and again. It is much like Pavlov’s dogs that were conditioned to the sound of the bell as a signal that it was time to eat, and began to salivate every time the bell went off, even when there was no sign of food. Humans are no different – after we respond a certain way to that traffic jam, for example, chances are we’ll continue to respond that same way until something in our environment is considerably different or until we make a conscious effort to change our habitual response.
And it is when we are conditioned to a given response that we feel like we do not have a choice in the matter. I say that there is always a choice and always an alternative to any response you may have chosen thus far. In fact, I’ll challenge to you find a single exception. If you find one, please let me know, because I have not been able to find one for years.
Until next time,
V