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Let’s say you’ve made the choice to lose weight.
Every day you will be faced with choices that will either keep you on track with that choice or lead you away from that choice. Will you choose to have fruit instead of a decadent dessert? Will you choose vegetables instead of pasta laden with sauces? Will you choose to exercise or skip it?
Consciousness and decision making
Let’s say you make the better choices today. That’s great, but you need to realize that you will be faced with the same kinds of choices each day. Some days you may not make the better choice.
These little choices will create your our life, one choice at a time. They create our story, and our story creates who we are today. This is why at the end we can say we are our choices. Your consciousness and decision making are what will define if you’ll create an intentional life or not.
A sound conscious choice definition requires to consider the many factors that will affect your focus, your choices and their consequences on your goals and your whole life.
Conscious choice meaning
Making conscious choices means being aware that we make thousands decisions every day. Each of those decisions will change slightly or greatly the direction of your life.
When you realize that we take most of these decisions automatically, we also understand that we give up most of our personal power. Making conscious choices is about taking back your power and start creating your life. It’s about choosing who you are and making your choices according to it.
Being aware that you will have to continue making daily choices can help your resolve and help you get through the moment of decision.
Making conscious choices means choosing to be a chooser and requires three things:
Making conscious choices
1) Be aware of the decisions you are making every day.
Take 10 minutes right now and try to focus on all the decisions you took in the last hour; focus on what you did and what you didn’t, and try to be aware of the decision that lead you to that action or inaction.
2) Be aware that things will pop up each day and often throughout the day.
Accept this will happen, and accept you’ll be able to deal with this. If you think about this, you’ve been practicing this all your life. For today, take a log of the decisions you make, your options, why you choose them, how it goes.
3) Be prepared ahead of time to make the better choice.
Improve your decision making skills, learn to understand the consequences of your decisions, adopt programmed decision making strategies where applicable.
Part of the conscious choice meaning is being aware of your habits
If you take the first exercise of the previous paragraph, you’ll find that part of your choices are coming from your long standing habits. Take another 10 minutes and focus again on what you did in the last hour.
This time, focus on the actions that come from your habits. Then, try to focus how your formed those habits and the decisions the led you there.
These decisions are responsible of how you today respond every day to most of your recurrent decisions. Becoming able to make conscious choices requires you become also aware of the role of your long-standing habits in your current daily life.
Habits can be difficult to break, but in the end, it is up to you to decide what you are doing and what you are not. And once you understand the power of your habits in your life, you can choose to change them, and remake them in a way that will be supporting of your goals.
Making conscious choices requires distance from external pressure
External pressure is a major factor that could hinder your conscious choices and have a similar effect to long-standing habits. This can take many forms and all of them will activate some kind of defensive or automatic response that could take over your thoughts.
For example peer pressure can lead you to making bad choices. We tend to think of peer pressure being exclusive to teenagers, but the truth is we are all subject to peer pressure.
How many times have you gone on a diet and as soon as you get together with friends they try to coax you into having dessert- They tell you to live it up a little, you can get back on your diet tomorrow. It’s in those moments when we usually cave in and have the dessert.
The good news is that even though it was your friends who lead you to the wrong choice in that moment, it’s still your responsibility to own up to the fact that you made the choice. This awareness is part of the conscious choice meaning.
Remember: whatever the pressure, you cannot control what others are doing to try to have control over you, but you can always choose how to respond. Choose to respond towards your goals and not theirs.
Part of conscious choice meaning is to take distance from shiny objects
As Lisa Kengten point out at thriveglobal.com you should also get away from shiny objects. This means anything that compels you but doesn’t enrich you, such as fancy technology, fashion trend, compulsive shopping or whatever.
Shiny objects act a kind of different external pressure, but will lock your attention and your ability to choose consciously. Dont’ get seduced by shiny things, because they will keep you from addressing what you need to accomplish. Practice focusing inward and not outward when making a choice, and shiny object will lose their grip.
Take 10 minutes and focus on yesterday. Try to catch a few choices you made attracted by shiny objects instead of your values. Try to focus on those shiny objects and try to explicit what is shining on them (i.e. what of these objects is really attracting you).
This will gradually make easier for you to detach from them and make more conscious choices.
Your choices will led towards your goals or away from them
No matter what you want to change in your life, you will be faced with many decisions on the way to your goals. If you go to bed late, stop working on a project, grab a donut or a flop in front of the TV instead of doing something productive, remember you made those decisions.
It is up to you to decide whether to choose or not to lead you closer to your goals or away from your goals. So, another part of the conscious choice meaning is also understanding the effect of your choices on your goals and your roadmap to them.
Making conscious choices will lead you closer to your goals and will greatly improve your ability to learn what will work and what won’t in your effort to achieve them… Remember that every choice you make will make you, so choose wisely…
Conscious choice meaning: be aware, detach from habits and pressure, and make choices towards your goals.
We’ve seen many ways that making choices is affecting your life and many points that concur in a conscious choice definition.
I define conscious decision as a choice you make aware of your values, your goals, your options, their consequences and free from the conditioning of habits, peer pressure and shiny objects. Making conscious choices will improve your life and we’ve seen a few tips to get you started.
Start thinking more about the choices you make. Make the decision to make better choices each day. Also realize that sometimes things will pop up that you aren’t prepared for. Consciousness and decision making will shape your life. It’s important you define conscious decision and what it means for you. Because this will define your life.
If you make a conscious effort to always be aware of the choices you make, you can stick to making better choices, overcoming anything bogging your down (including your habits, peer pressure,shiny objects) or what’s going on in your life. This means you can take back the power of creating your life.
So stop making excuses, make your conscious choices and start making changes in your life. If the fear of making the wrong decisions is what is stopping you, then I have some more good advice in my making the right decision without the fear of making decisions article.
To go even further, check my new “Fast and Good Decision Making to Unlock Your Life Right Now” course
