As my client and I were kicking about the situation she was in, with the choices she had made, I heard myself say “well, you chose the choices you’ve chosen“.  

We both stopped.  She said to me that the phrase was one to remember, a writer-downer.

The point of that jumbled phrase is the responsibility we have for the choices we’ve made.  Not pointing the finger outwards at someone or something else but to accept, acknowledge and work with the choices we made.

Oh my goodness – just like you – have I made some great choices over the years?! 

• Moving roles when I knew I was bored and restless
• Leaving when I knew I’d be performance managed if I didn’t manage my performance
• Finishing a relationship which was limping along (a number actually over the years)
• Buying a flat I couldn’t afford but stretching a lot to be able to… 
• Marrying someone who, on paper, wouldn’t be ‘the one’ but who, 24 years later, still makes my toes curl…

AND, as you will have too – I’ve made a myriad of ‘crap’ choices too.  Ones I’ve lived to regret and learn from.

• Staying in a relationship for at least a year too long
• Treating a kind friend in a slapdash way and hurting her
• Two-timing someone who was a big love in my life but I chose to overlook that
• Allowing someone to sap my confidence rather than tell them to ‘go away’…
• Moving jobs because I didn’t know how to negotiate a better one where I was and then coming back 12 months later…

I’m not sharing any of this with you to impress you in any way.  Nope.

I’m sharing just the tip of the iceberg of my choices to encourage you to look at the choices you’ve chosen, the effects of them and the responsibility of them and the outcomes, all being yours.

That’s where you become driver of your own bus.  

The person who’s staying in her lane with her choices and working with them.

Not someone looking out and fretting and regretting (wasted energy) and wishing you’d done it differently and staying stuck with those choices…

Oh and another thought.  The game is always going on… the choices which feel or felt ‘crap’ can suddenly shift with the circumstances which have changed around you.

So.  My client and I came to a landing on looking at 

• where she’s at right now.  
• What the positives are.  
• What she’s been tolerating.  
• What she can change.  
• What she has to accept and work with.  And so on.

It’s a mental shift.  So much is, isn’t it!  And once made, you can embrace where you are and what you have, what you’ve achieved and be more at peace.  

More at one with where YOU are.  Not everyone else.  They don’t care really … and only you know what’s really important to you. 

And all that ‘coulda, woulda, shoulda’ energy you can waste can be used more positively elsewhere.

A final word on the matter…

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 And in other news…

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Snowy and I had a lovely week in Crete visiting my sister and her husband and taking a well-needed pause.   A bit of time in a swanky hotel and then fun times with family and animals!