On Choice
PART ONE: ON CHOICE
Choice is everywhere, isn’t it?
There are the choices we habitually make every day, with or without thinking.
What we say, eat, drive, feel, and do. How we dress if we’re given the choice in our workplaces and communities. How we choose to move our body, if we move it, and how we love our bodies in all their forms and functions. The way we scroll, laugh, vote, spend our money, and recharge on the weekends. The way we see the world and interact with it.
Everything is a choice yet our day-to-day habits can become so cyclical that we often forget we’re still making choice after choice with our most treasured gift — our time.
THE CHOICES WE LONG TO MAKE
Then there are the choices we long to make yet choose to sit on for weeks, months, and years. We elect to wait and see. We let time slip by while we hope things improve so we don’t have to take imperfect action. We watch and wait to see if the swelling of life’s inflammation goes down, so to speak. We cross our fingers for a better time or a clear way forward before we muster the courage to act upon what we already know is true.
Time floats by and nothing at its core actually changes. We still don’t like where we are.
The swelling hasn’t gone down. More gray hair arrives; so too does the fatigue, boredom, and genuine apathy. The world feels different to us now because our view of the world has shifted through the lens of our inertia and heartache. Further beneath, a subtle tempest of inner turmoil begins to simmer on the proverbial stove of our unrest and indecision.
We keep the career that no longer feels like anything but a paycheck even as we long to do something fresh and new with our talents. We keep the house because mortgages are supposed to equal maturity and a sense of belonging. We stay in the partnership that offers little depth of emotional intimacy, rich laughter, and true connection even if the sex is great.
We abandon our values, boundaries, and postpone every hard conversation to avoid rocking the boat or winding up alone. We invest in week-long vacations because creating a life that feels like vacation every day just seems like too much effort.
We focus more on saving for house repairs than on saving our own spirit. We ache to be seen and held yet fail to recognize we must first accept and receive such love from our own authentic selves. We put ourselves last on the list and honestly wonder what went wrong or if “this” is all there is in life.
“I should want this, shouldn’t I?”
“I need to be in a better place first, then I’ll leap.”
“Just one more drink, it’s my down time. It’s happy hour.”
“What if this is the best I can do?”
“What if I already missed my chance?”
“But what would they think of me | say about me | do if I did that?”
“What if they don’t forgive me?”
“What if it doesn’t work, then what?”
“Why doesn’t any of this feel like me?”
“What if I’m too old.”
We reconcile our questions with superfluous answers. We look for external affirmation to assuage the doubt. We choose numbing agents and default beliefs forged from the status quo with every distraction serving up a cocktail of artificial highs, comfort, and a false sense of security. One thing remains the same in all these situations — the swelling doesn’t go down. The inflammation of our spirit abides and courageous choice is the salve it seeks to be free.
THE INNER OUTCRY
You already know what I mean by this term, don’t you? The inner outcry begins when we repeatedly delay courageous choices.
When our inner knowing is diminished, dejected, or denied, an inner outcry is born. First a whisper, then building to a steady roar until it becomes challenging to look ourselves in the eye.
We hope no one will notice the feelings of resignation, apathy, and fear settling into our day-to-day energy. Maybe we won’t either. About this time in our lives, we tend to get really, really busy. We fill our days, calendars, and hands with activities, people, habitual highs, and screens to occupy space in an attempt to extinguish our fears and the realities created by our choices of convenience over conviction.
Every choice we continue to forego yet long to explore beats like a quiet, steady drum just under the surface of our lives. As time passes, the proverbial swelling transitions into a full-fledged ache. The fear within grows hot; the desires and unclaimed choices do too.
When we delay decisions, we can subconsciously muddy the waters of our clarity, causing us to begin to doubt what is really true and what is our fear. Clarity begins when we engage within; cultivating stillness to listen to our inner truth and taking action on its behalf. However, we humans love to abandon our inner compass or seek external reinforcements when we feel like we’re getting mixed messages. The more we go outside for what we seek, the quieter the inside becomes. Our intuition grows dim and a cycle of hesitation, second-guessing, or avoidance begins.
“Is what I imagine even possible?”
“What if it doesn’t even exist?”
“I don’t even know for sure what I want so isn’t this good enough?”
“How the hell do I start to move through this fear?”
“I meditate. I eat well. I move my body. I’m still scared. Will it ever get better?”
“What if I missed my chance?”
The agony of knowing our truth and not taking action on its behalf is just that — agony.
First the agony of indecision, then the agony of second-guessing. “Is what I know to be true actually true?” So we wait some more and the choices we make begin to feel further from reach and wild cycle of unrest continues. Conversely, when we follow our inner guidance and take corresponding courageous action, we begin to trust ourselves more deeply.
KNOWING WHAT IS CAN’T & WHAT IS WON’T
When we are living within indecision, the lines between can’t and won’t blur quickly. Conscious, courageous choices invite us to explore what is a true can’t for us and what is an honest won’t.
Sometimes we genuinely are unable to move forward in specific ways. Yet when it comes to choices that move us in the direction of creating the life we desire, it becomes essential to our integrity to explore what is a true can’t and what is an honest won’t in our decisions.
Be willing to look at your choices and your indecisiveness for a moment. Which is which?
“I can’t do this right now” stokes the energy of indecision and fear-driven living. The practice of can’t rests on fear as its guiding force, consistently listening to ego for its instruction. Can’t is frequently the choice we make when trying to stay comfortable or secure. It illuminates feelings of captivity and is a brilliant way to make an excuse. It leans heavily on familiarity.
“I won’t be choosing to do this right now” holds a different kind of power. It focuses on deliberate, conscious choice. Won’t takes ownership over what will and will not happen, no matter the outcome. We humans are quick to reference won’t when such a choice will illuminate our values. We love leaning on won’t when we are standing for something as it commands respect, dignity, and empowered choice. It leans heavily on trust.
The best part about won’t? When feeling far from our inner guidance, asking ourselves what is an honest won’t about how we choose to live, love, and lead is a direct pathway back to reacquainting ourselves with ourselves. Can’t gives our power away. Won’t reclaims our power, instilling ownership in all our choices.
PART TWO: FOLLOW YOUR DEEPEST KNOWING
Choice has fascinated me since I can remember. The choices we long for, the choices we forego, the choices we delay, and those we make from the heart.
As a kid, I watched adults all around me choose what they should do instead of what they wanted. I also watched young children do what they wanted and cross their fingers not to be punished for it. It was an odd experience and had me questioning my own relationship to choice and decision.
Was it possible to make choices that lit you up without fear of retaliation or negative consequence? Then there were my Sunday school experiences in which humanity’s relationship to choice within the context of Christianity took on a whole new life form.
I kept hearing that “God said, so others did” and this made me wonder about the freedom of choice in relationship to this avenue of spirituality. I raised my hand, asking my teacher, Dorothy, some version of the following:
“Can you be a follower of God even if you don’t always take his advice?”
I didn’t get a direct response from Dorothy that day. It was simply reinforced that following God and Scripture as it was written and interpreted by all those men centuries ago was the only true way to live. However, her response wasn’t enough for me so I took the same question to my great-grandmother, Audrey. She was the wisest woman I knew and my childhood best friend so I counted on her to guide me well. She didn’t disappoint. Her words captivated me:
“When you get still—really, really still, you’ll always know what to do, Tonyalynne. Stillness will bring you to the threshold of your deepest knowing. This place is where Spirit abides. The hard part will be trusting this inner knowing even when it doesn’t make sense, it isn’t convenient, safe, or runs contrary to all you’ve ever known. The voices of the world are loud yet your intuition is your true compass.”
She repeated this last part again and again as time when on:
”Follow your deepest knowing, Tonyalynne. Always.”
IGNORING THE TRUTH
Despite Audrey’s wisdom, I denied its truth for much of my adulthood, wrestling with conformity and taking up full-blown residence in my comfort zone. I ignored my deepest knowing in my career, health, life, sexuality, spirituality, and relationships for literally years.
I wanted to be courageous but I didn’t want to get uncomfortable. I want to stick with the familiar yet was fascinated by those that didn’t in their lives. I read books on courage but didn’t choose it as an actual practice. I stayed in both careers and relationships where I was considered a good option rather than a hell-yes priority. I chose suffering instead of feeling the pain. I said no to my dreams to follow the status quo. I didn’t want to lose people in the quest to truly become myself. An inner outcry was born, fed, and “managed.”
Beneath it all, my natural intuition awaited my return to make choices that truly set me free. I’d like to say it was an average Tuesday afternoon when I began choosing to follow my deepest knowing again and that everything began working out from then on.
But that would be a lie. (And it seldom works that way either.)
It took my mother’s death, a devastating fall and subsequent spine injury, two more life-altering health diagnoses, complete financial ruin, multiple career & relationship losses, and homelessness to finally decide to start following what I’ve always known to be true.
Some would say I’m stubborn yet I realize now that I needed transformative challenges to nudge me to begin making deep, courageous choices. I wasn’t going to truly learn about courage from the sidelines. I needed to get in the water.
We all do in one way or another, don’t we?
While I’d like to say I always follow my deepest knowing now, that too would be a lie. Getting still, befriending my courage, and following my intuition is a daily practice, one I’m falling in love with more and more as I get older.
Learning to trust myself and what I know to be true doesn’t mean life is easy either. It rarely is, actually. Just as Audrey promised, following my deepest knowing has meant loss, heartbreak, desolation, and days that bleed with grief and loneliness. Yet making choices that light me up, choosing the hell yes even when I’m scared out of my mind about the how, and choosing what feels true continues to set me free every day I show up to its practice.
MOVING FROM DESIRE TO DECISION
When we make a conscious choice to follow our deepest knowing, courage becomes the bedrock of our decision-making. We move beyond desire to decision, stoking the fire of our confidence.
Taking a risk on ourselves by following our intuition holds the unique ability to improve our confidence from within rather than tying our confidence to external outcomes.
As a coach, I regularly witness clients strengthening their self-awareness, sharpening clarity, and taking conscious, integral, successful action when their intuition is a key focus of their growth and healing.
Intuition isn’t a tool for the select few — it’s in all of us and the avenue to move from desire to decision with clarity and ease. Strengthening our natural intuition deepens the practice of our courage for all aspects of life because when intuition is elevated, we begin to trust in who we inherently are.
We release inherited beliefs and reclaim empowering ones. We hesitate less, take risks with greater ease, feel our feelings without judgment, and rest in the depth of inner guidance for everything. Time may be our most treasured universal gift; intuition is the inner compass of truth guiding us in how best to spend it.
As all wisdom traditions teach us, discomfort is the beginning of true transformation. The changes we are looking for actually live within our choices. The decisions we make (and the ones we don’t) shape our story and spirit. Every choice holds the potential to hold us captive or set us free.
Consider a choice you’ve been waffling or hesitating on lately. Name the fears associated with that choice. Then name the fears beneath those fears and so on…until you trust you’ve reached the root of the fear. Get still and brutally honest with yourself. Then move on to the question below:
WHAT DO YOU REALLY, REALLY WANT?
Here in the States, we are inundated with choice. We fight for choice, we rally behind our choices, and we cry out for its freedom whenever we feel threats to its existence in the wake of a fear-driven culture. Yet choice by its very nature can feel downright paralyzing too.
“What do I want?” can be a hard question. We are quick to know and vocalize what we do not want yet hesitate to allow our inner outcry of desire to be heard, felt, and seen beyond ourselves. We also presume our desires can wait—that we have plenty of time — the very thing not promised to any of us. I invite you—no, I urge you—to ask yourself this question.
“What do I really, really want? What choice can I make now to move in its direction today?”
Be willing to wrestle with these questions, sit with them, have coffee or tea with them, live in them. Don’t rush to an answer just to make a mindless choice. Be willing to get still and return to your deepest knowing. Share what you learn with the Audreys in your life.
Here is what I know to be true.
It does exist.
That way forward you’re looking for. That life you hesitant to believe is possible to create.
It does exist. It is possible.
So too does the peace that surpasses all understanding. The career, vocation, or business that doesn’t feel like work. The person that loves your mystery, passion, and fire and also feels like a safe place to call home. The community that gets you, challenges you, and uplifts you. The calling that feels ever-elusive in your life. The prosperity and purpose you seek to claim. You are worthy of all you desire. And it does exist, dear friend. It may not come in the external packages you thought it should but it will be more beautiful, more passionate, more kind, and more good than you can possibly imagine.