Have you ever try to come to restaurant and ask the waiters to serve anything? I did. I went to a restaurant and asked that. Lucky for me that I don’t have any allergies and I can eat anything. At that time, they server me three cup chicken. It was nice. In another occasion, I tried the same thing in a different restaurant. It was a mess. I don’t even remember what I got, and it just bad. It was not worth remembering. I learn that in life it has similar implication. In some things, you might be able to go by without conscious decision, but in some other, it will make you and sometimes people around you to suffer.
In everything we do, we will need to make decisions. Since time is limited, when you accept one thing, it also means that you reject other things for that time. For example, if you’re working between 9 to 6, you can’t make appointment for watching a movie at 3pm. Likewise, when you watch a movie on that time during working time, you need to take leave on that day to be excused. Do you know, since we have a lot of things that we need to use our conscious decisions, there are a lot of things that we decide unconsciously? especially the basic ones. I learn from Michael Hyatt’s podcast and I find that that is the amazing part of our brain. If we keep conscious in making every and each decision, we will exhaust ourselves from making good decisions on the ones that we really need to make one. For example, right now, you’re not reading the word character by character. You glance on it and you know what it means. This is a good example: ” accdcrnig to rseecrah at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno’t mttaer in waht oderr the lterets in a wrod are, the olny irpoamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rhgit pclae. ” and there are other things that you do unconsciously
I wish everything in life is that simple. I’m still learning to make conscious decision, especially in the area of my bad habit. I know that I like to procrastinate. I feel that I’m so busy working on a project, so I justify myself not to give update when the time I complete it is after office hour. I think and decide to give the update ‘tomorrow’. And as you know it, tomorrow comes, and it (updating the status) is not happening because the project is still going. And that suffers my performance review. I might finish my part on time, but the other party blame it on me because I didn’t report the update. This is one example of choosing wrong side with or without conscious decision.
How about you? You might or might not ever encountered that before in your work. You might have different experience. But I learn that, when I want to grow more in my life, I need to be intentional on important things. especially in your family, work and your well being. I won’t be able to enjoy my marriage if I’m not working on it. I won’t be able to have a job if I’m not looking and willing to work for it. There’s only one thing that will always go by itself without you makes any decision. And that is time.
Every day in life, time will always continue. No matter what, so it is better to make it counts.
What do we need to do then?
1. Make intentional decisions in the things that matters most
If you want to grow, it must be intentional. Make it count and don’t let life run by itself. Prioritize your life. If you think work is more important than your family, you might schedule working time more than it should. And that will make your family suffers. You might think that you work hard for your family, but will it be matter, all your hard work, when apparently your family resented it? Choose a better side of decision before you regrets it.
2. Be responsible with your control
You’ll be surprise that you have more control than you think. One of my pastor shared this to me: “you can receive things that you don’t like (from others, from situation, etc and you can’t control it), but you can learn to like what you receive.” You can blame others or the situation that makes you do something that you don’t like, but at the end, regardless what happened, you made that choice. An extreme example that I read from “the Power of Habit” is a story of a gambling addict who lost everything to her gambling addiction and then instead of be responsible, she blame the gambling company that they enticed her to do it. In this case, she can’t control other people’s action, but she can choose to response.
3. Be responsive to life, instead of reactive
For those thing that you can do, learn to respond, not to react. Reacting means that you don’t have any preparation of what’s coming to you and then you react when it comes. Responding means that you have prepare things before hand, so when it (whatever it is) comes to you, you’re ready to respond. Like the example of the gambler, when he knows that he is addicted to gamble, he can choose a better way, which is to seek help from family member or professional. That is a good and better response, rather than let the habit makes unconscious decision and he become responsible with it.
In closing this topic, I think Switchfoot has made a clear statement or question in this area in “This is your life” song: “This is your life, are you who you want to be?” Nobody can answer that question beside you. You will need to be responsible on the things that is important to you. Might as well you make conscious choice rather than other people choose it for you. Choose a (better) side before the other side gives the worst of your life.
Isaiah 26:3 – You, Lord, give perfect peace to those who keep their purpose firm and put their trust in You.
How do you handle life? Do you make any plan on what you want to do? Please give comments below.
