The Art of Choosing
We may appreciate and aspire to a certain level of uniqueness, but we believe it’s also important that our choices be understood.
We need to pay close attention to how people react to our actions and, if possible, talk to them directly about how we come across.
In the end, the desire to have others know us the way we know ourselves can be more powerful than the desire to be put on a pedestal. When we see how others look at us, we want more than anything to recognize ourselves.
Personal happiness is always a very serious matter. It’s all well and good to propose formulas and strategies to other people, but we’re not sure we should trust them when our own long-term happiness is clearly at stake.
Beneath the many layers of shoulds and shouldn’ts that cover us, there lies a constant, single, true self that is just waiting to be discovered. We think of the process of finding ourselves as a personal excavation.
If we learn we’re not as great as we thought we were, we can decide to change our behavior so that it aligns more with how we want to be perceived.
Though self-control may not be solely responsible for the positive outcomes, the correlation suggests that we shouldn’t underestimate its impact on our lives.
Restrictions do not necessarily diminish a sense of control, and freedom to think and do as you please does not necessarily increase it. The
to choose, we must first perceive that control is possible.
When we speak of choice, what we mean is the ability to exercise control over ourselves and our environment. In order to choose, we must first perceive that control is possible.