EP15: Reconnecting to Choice

This is winning with wellness, a podcast about inspiring the wellness warrior in you. If you're feeling lost or alone in your wellness journey, or looking for new ideas and inspiration, you are in the right place, a place you can learn about all things wellness, in business life and living your host Jenny rice, we'll be bringing you inspiring stories and practical tools to improve your overall wellness, personally and professionally. Imagine what living a life of wellness would be like. Thank you for joining us today.

Hi, everyone, Jenny rice here. And I'm really excited to dig into the topic of choice. And more importantly, actually talking about reconnecting with choice. One of the things that we forget, and I am a culprit of it as well is that we are actually given the freedom of choice. And it is so easy for us to disconnect from that opportunity and understanding due to the overwhelm that we experience in our lives. And one of the things I'm sure people are going to be asking right now is how does this actually pertain to overall wellness or health. And what's really important is that when we reconnect to our choice, we create connect to all the decision making we make in our lives. And that can be in any part of it, our professional or personal, our health, or wellness, all of those areas. So it's important that we capitalize and highlight and champion our purpose of choice. So my talk and time with you guys today is really going to be focusing around awakening, awakening, awaken that ability to choose, and let's set our compass, let's be really clear on where we're going and why we're going there. And this is going to be a journey that's totally unique to us. Don't forget, we want to connect to our success when we anchor in to the results that are positive from the choices we've made. It gives us a benchmark to keep building from and building from. So let's use this opportunity and our successes to connect us to choice and keep us in that powerful play. You know, there's an incredible wizard out there, for those of you that are Harry Potter fans, and his name is Albus Dumbledore. And he shares so deeply about his belief system around choice versus abilities when he has this moment in the movie with Harry. And he really talks about that it is our choices hairy, that show what we truly are far more than our abilities. And if we can tap into what that wise wizard is sharing, is it's not about what we do, it's what we choose to do. And when I when I say that, I want to be really clear, just because you can run 1000 kilometers, doesn't mean it's the right choice. So the ability to do something doesn't mean it's the right decision. Now, it could be depending on your path and your goals and your outcomes. But this is what's so important about choices that's reminding that we're choosing. And I share this quite often with my with my children, specifically, it's being very clear that we can only choose our own actions and our own response, we can't choose those of others. So we want to make sure that we're in in championship of our own decision making. So let's awaken the the concept of choice within ourselves. When we think of choice, I want you to consider that your choice comes from within, nobody can take that away from you. And they know at times it feels like you are choiceless. But in reality, you always have the decision. You always own the the opportunity to choose. And it's important to remember that that choice comes from within into quiet the external noise to stop listening to outside situations or outside influence. And it could even be not wanting to listen to this podcast. And I would I would applaud you if you decided that this out of your own choice was important for you not to listen to the rest of this episode. I would be thrilled to know that you had taken that pathway also to the only person behavior we can control is our own. And I shared that earlier with you as an example with what how I speak with my children. You know, we're all in relationships in situations where we find ourselves extremely reactive in in certain areas of our lives. And it could be because of old relationships, I think quite often tumultuous relationships with family members tend to erode

a road, our awareness of choice on how we behave, we fall into old patterns, and responses, and overreact, I going to share a story of a amazing couple that I know they are, madly in love, they've been together for well over 40 plus years, they're a power couple in my eyes. However, in areas of their communication, they're extremely in a reactive mode. And what happens is, they're already pre tensing an argument before it even arises out of old patterns, and they forget to choose to, to pause and to listen, and wait instead of react. So just remember, we can only control our own behaviors, you can't change others. And our behavior is a choice. This is the interesting thing. You know, when we're driving in our car, and we get angry, and we road rage, and you know, I can stand here and say that I have to a road rage. But when we forget is I'm choosing to take on that action, the person in the car in front of me didn't hear their response or action into their driving, whatever they did, maybe they they gave you an aggressive signal, whatever that looks like. That was that was there to own me going off the rails or getting angry or maybe giving my own verbal or nonverbal sign language on behavior. That's mine. So it's my choice, I chose to respond. So I really want to invite you to consider what it means to awaken your choice from within. What does that mean to you. And then we're going to set our little compass here, we're going to get very clear, we're going to tap into our moral vision and mission and decide where do we want to be? And how do we want to show up, because our journey is unique to us. And which means it's unique to you. It's an individual pathway. We might be in marriages, we might be in businesses we might be in, in different relationships. But again, our journey is unique to us. Other people are our passengers on our own journey. So we want to remember that as we set our compass, that we're very clear on why we want to do what we're doing in the choices that we're making. And I'm going to invite you to step outside your comfort zone in this and take a habit inventory. And what I mean by that is what habits are you currently doing on a habitual pathway. Those are your choice, we forget. And people, many of us don't realize that when we get in our car, and we drive and we end up at from A to Z and we've driven it 1000 times sometimes we don't remember getting there. That's robot mode, we're in the habit. So I invite you to disrupt that habit, and go a different direction. Turn right instead of turning left and see where it takes you. So take a habit inventory. And I'm going to remind you guys to really consider this as something that I do on a regular basis. And I work through this with my clients get seriously clear on are the habits in my life helping me or hurting me.

Are they helping me or hurting me? I had a habit and I've shared this many, many times, that when around three o'clock in the afternoon at work, I'd be tired, I need a sugar buzz, the first thing I would do is go to the kitchen and put my hand into the container of chocolate chips. And I would pull up that handful and I'd slam them back and I'd be like yes, but in reality what was happening it was it wasn't supporting myself because it was giving myself sugar. So it is the habit was actually hurting me. What was helping me in that habit is I was getting up from my desk, I was changing my location and I was changing my my frame of mind. So I still do that habit around three o'clock every single day. The outcome though the reward is different. Or the act is I don't go and put my hand and the chocolate chip container anymore, but I do grab either an orange some cupcake It's something that is healthy for me that will support the reason why I'm making the change. And that is to give me more energy and change my scenery. Another thing that we're going to really talk about as we reset our compass is let's get really defined on our purpose. What's your why, dig into your why, for those of you that have heard me share this before, I'm going to just say it again, you need to understand on a deep level, why you're doing all the things that you're doing. If it stays at a surface level, it's easy to push off and make it non, you know, it's, it's totally negotiable, it can be moved out of your schedule and out of your calendar. So get super clear to the emotional connection to your why, and that deep rooted, why. And that will really help you move forward in your choice making. So remembering and we're gonna just talk about some of this a little bit here, when it comes to the connection is you are your success story, you are the product of your choices. Every decision that you've made, that has led you to a positive outcome in your life was a success story of choices that empowered you. So remember to liberate yourself in your decision making and the choices that you stand in, because you have the power to decide. Bottom line, you have the power to decide, reflect. And what's important in choice is reflecting on our own responsibility, I share that story about relationships, and knowing that how I show up is my responsibility. So I want to really encourage and invite you all to consider reflecting on your journeys, I don't always show up the way I want to show up. But what I can do is learn from the experience, decide how I would have done it differently. And then when I'm presented with that opportunity again, or something slightly different, I will stand in the best version of myself and choose the way that honors me the most. And become really aware where my choices are leading. You know, I encourage you to become super conscious of where your choices are leading you. Because those are the moments we need to celebrate, celebrate in those positive outcomes. I am very famous, and I work with a lot of people we do attract the people that we are that are very focused and driven into into action. And what happens with that type of mentality sometimes is like forget to go, Wow, that's what I accomplished. Or this was an amazing experience. I tend to get so excited about moving on to the next thing that I missed one of the most vital pieces about choice and that's celebrating the outcome. So become aware of the choices that you are leading you to greatness and then celebrate those choices. And, you know, I invite you to think about this amazing quote from john a shed, a ship is in harbor is safe. But that is not what a ship is built for.

So when we think about stepping outside our comfort zone in choice, it can be very overwhelming. And what I invite you to consider is understanding we were built for more, we were built to shine our light as brightly as possible. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what other people say. Those people that are trying to dull your light. That's about them, not about you, you were not put on this earth to be diminished. To be oppressed. You were put on this earth to shine as bright as you possibly can. And one of the most vital pieces of shining your light to make change in the world. Whatever that looks like, is by connecting to your choice. I invite you to sit down and do a survey of your own journey, your own life, and make sure that you are a champion of your own choice. Thank you so much for sharing your time with me. I hope this has inspired you into some form of action. I encourage you as soon as you stop listening, seeing or being a part of this is you sit down and take five minutes, five minutes to write out those habits we talked about, what are the habits that are serving you? What are the habits that are holding you back, take those tools and champion them in to your power of choice. And start with one small thing. If we try to change everything at once usually works against us. So I asked you to take that inventory and determine what one action will change the course of your trajectory, one small action and step into that.

Thank you all so much.