The Awesome Power of Personal Choice by Elizabeth Vise
Teaser: In every waking moment, each of us has the opportunity to choose to think and behave in the same way we have previously. Or, we can choose to be different from who we have ever been. Join Dr. Vise as she explores what it means to harness the power available to us to choose the path we walk--or the trail we blaze--through our everyday experiences.
Elizabeth Vise has been a member of Pathways Church since July of 2006. She teaches Biology at Tarrant County College and lives with her husband, Jack, and their two dogs: Ginger and Faith.
Reading:
This morning, I want to read for you three short excerpts from a book titled: It only takes a minute to change your life by Willie Jolley. These excerpts come from a section of the book that begins with the famous Biblical scripture from Proverbs 23:7: “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.”
The Mind Tattoo. Dr. Norman Vincent Peale stated: “If you think in negative terms, you will get negative results. Yet if you think in positive terms, you will get positive results.” His book The Power of Positive Thinking became the standard for a new generation of positive thinkers. In fact, it was one of the first books that I read as I made the transition from a negative reactor to a positive creator. I started to realize I could create some of my circumstances by having a positive mental attitude. I once heard a powerful story that Dr. Peale shared on a television show. He told of how he had been walking by a tattoo shop and a very confused-looking man came out of the shop with a new tattoo on his arm that read “Born to Lose!” Dr. Peale watched the man stumble down the street and then noticed that the tattoo artist had come out of the shop and also looked as the man walked away. Dr. Peale asked the tattoo artist about the young man with the “Born to Lose” tattoo. The old tattoo artist sadly shook his head and said, “I asked him if he was sure that he wanted the tattoo to state that he was born to lose. And he was adamant that he did.” Dr. Peale said, ‘Isn’t that strange?” Then the tattoo artist said, ‘Not really! See, before he had it tattooed on his arm, he had tattooed it on his brain!” He believes that he really was born to lose and therefore he will act like he was born to lose. None of us were born to lose. We were born to win, but the choice is up to us!
Great Thinkers. Great thinkers throughout history have had many different philosophies of life, but all agree on the fact that success is a direct result of your thinking. Dr. Peale said, “If you think in negative terms you will get negative results. Yet if you could think in positive terms, you would achieve positive results.” Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “A man is what he thinks about all day long.” William James, the great philosopher and psychologist, said, “My greatest discovery in human beings is that they can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.”
Change Your Thinking. Before you change your thinking, you have to change what goes into your mind…. Your thinking affects how you act and therefore what you do, just as to change your weight and health you must change what you eat. And the same is true for your mind. You must fill your mind with positive, healthy, inspirational, and encouraging material and get rid of the things that will kill your dreams and aspirations: doubt, fear, and negative thinking. Just as you are what you eat, you also are exactly what you think about. Remember that your input always determines your output. Change your thinking and change your life!
Sermon:
I was running errands in the car the other day, flipping radio channels, hoping to find something that WASN’T news or radio personalities or gangsta stuff or propaganda—I wanted MUSIC. I happened upon a country/western station, which, at the time, was actually playing a SONG, not a commercial. As I listened to the remainder of the song, the story emerged: The singer was still pining away for an old flame—probably his high school sweetheart?—from his home town, saying that he seemed to see her face everywhere he went. He lamented that they had once dreamed of getting the heck out of their small town so they could Experience the World. Apparently, he had done so and had left her behind. She was still in the home town, now blissfully married with a couple of children, and he was still lonesome for her. A very typical story. One of the lyrics, though, stuck with me. He said: “We made our choices long ago” … and, although he seemed sorry to have lost that relationship with the girl, he seemed happy for her and also satisfied that he had gone on to make a name for himself as a singer.
We each have our own stories. We all make choices—big ones, little ones, in-between ones—that shape the course of our lives. This is what I want to talk about today. My intention is to share with you some ideas and philosophies that ring true for me—truths that have been tested by the crucible of my experience. However, I must warn you that some of what I will say may be difficult for you to hear. Tough love is like that sometimes. Be that as it may, I hope something I say in the next few minutes, has value for you, maybe even inspires you. If it does, wonderful, if not, just dismiss these ideas and keep going on your path. This is one of the great things about Unitarian Universalism. We have a free pulpit. That means I can stand before you and speak my truth, whatever that might be. But we also have a free pew, which means that you can freely accept or reject the ideas you hear from the pulpit. In a UU church, you are not required to believe as anyone else believes. You are free and encouraged to find the philosophical or spiritual mixture that makes sense to you. Of course, to do this, you must make many deeply personal choices.
Let’s start with the basic choices you make about Who You Are. Author Neale Donald Walsch says that: “Every decision you make --every decision-- is not a decision about what to do. It's a decision about WHO YOU ARE.” So who are you?
Presumably your life philosophies are based upon your values, your core beliefs, and your understanding of the world around you and how you fit into it, and so on. You’ve defined yourself on innumerable occasions by making (and continuing to make) fundamental decisions about your life—your choices regarding your personal integrity—your choice of profession—your choice to come out as a gay or lesbian or bisexual or transgender person—your choice of spouse—the decision about whether or not to have children, and if so, how you’re going to raise them—your choice NOT to EVER have another drink—your choice to attend a UU church—your decisions regarding supporting Pathways Church with your service and your finances—your decisions on how you treat your body, and on and on and on … These are “BIG CHOICES.”
Of these BIG choices, there are a few that have happened at times in your life when you were truly at a fork in the road. The ripples in your life from a single decision overtly and tangibly touched all other aspects of your life. I call these times Crossroads Moments. These are the moments when you make a choice that shuts off options for you now or later. Such choices also open opportunities for you now or later. Robert Frost wrote about this in his famous poem, “The Road Not Taken.” Most of you have read this poem at some time in your life, but I want to read it to you again and ask you to put yourself into the author’s shoes.
|
Robert Frost (1874–1963). Mountain Interval. 1920. |
|
1. The Road Not Taken |
|
(pause)
Crossroads Moments in your life. In this case, the author knew he was choosing a particular path that would shut and also open doors in his life, and he seems to be pleased by his choice. Sometimes, in that very instant, we know we are in a Crossroads Moment. I’ve known a handful of these. So have you. The time, when I was barely 18 years old, I chose NOT to go on a date with my best friend, Jeff, knowing THEN AND THERE that I was throwing away something I had cultivated and wished for: the opportunity to be Jeff’s bride. There is FAR more to this tale, and I won’t bog us down with the details. Suffice it to say that, as fond of Jeff as I was and as often as I had thought he would make an ideal partner, I knew I would not be happy as the sort of wife he had wished for—a very Southern Baptist wife who would be a June Cleaver-like stay-at-home mom. So I told Jeff the truth: that I already had a date for the evening. I sobbed unconsolably in my date’s car for about an hour before I could explain to him why I was crying. It made for an interesting evening. But I knew deep in my soul that I had made the right choice for myself. I closed that door—slammed it shut—and have never regretted it. You have made choices of similar impact, right?
In your Order of Service Bulletin, you should find a blank half-sheet of paper. I’d like you to take just a moment to jot down, on that paper, one of your Crossroads Moments—a time in your life when you KNEW you were making a life-altering decision. And also write how your life has changed because of it. If you need to write it in secret code, then go ahead. This is for YOU; you won’t have to share this with anyone else. I’ll give you some time. …
(pause)
Now we get to the place where we must to do some hard work.
What about all the myriad ‘little’ everyday choices we make? The ones that slowly but surely steer the course of your life? Some of these “Little Choices” are automatic everyday choices that keep our society working and keep us safe within our society. For example, we mostly agree to obey traffic lights and signs; most of us would agree that lying, stealing, cheating, etc. are not good things to do, and so forth. But many of our decisions are unique to US and are the very choices that MAKE us unique. For example: the clothes you wore today, your hairstyle, the people you hang out with, the way you spend Friday evenings, the books you read, the TV you watch, how you spend your ‘discretionary money’… You know—those choices that seem “little” but really are HUGE. Again, lest ye think that I am “preaching at you” about YOUR evil ways, I will humbly admit that there is a rather extensive collection of poor choices that I make. I am not proud of them, but I will at least own them. Here’s one of the more obvious examples: I eat food that is really not good for me and in quantities that far exceed what my body needs. Interesting thing is: nobody force-feeds me. I know what I’m doing when I eat pizza and cheesecake and hamburgers. And I know that I am the one who is responsible for making BETTER choices in this arena.
Think of some aspect of your life that is really not to your liking. I’ll bet you have KNOWINGLY made the choices that create this situation. But we keep making the same choices, don’t we? It’s habitual. And we keep justifying them to ourselves and those around us, sometimes using the ‘blame game’ so we can soothe ourselves or try to trick ourselves into thinking that we are not in charge of these aspects of our lives.
I submit to you that you are Where You Are (whether you like it or not) because that is where you have CHOSEN TO BE. Your circumstances now are the cumulative result of every decision (big and little) that you have ever made. Every step you take is a decision. And if you are not 100% pleased with your circumstances, you need look no farther than the mirror to find the responsible party. To be sure, there are circumstances that are truly not of our making, but we still get to choose how we respond to any situation. … In their book, Fish!, about the famous Pike Place Fish Market in Seattle, the authors say this about choice: “There is always a choice about the way you do your work, even if there is not a choice about the work itself.”
If you think you are not happy with your situation, what are you doing about it? If your answer is a sheepish “Not much,” then I would suggest to you that these negative-seeming things in your life are really quite acceptable you, … if you’re not really doing anything to change them. Again, I’ll be very transparent: My home office is cluttered almost to the point that I can’t get anything done—there are bowls of beads, stacks of books, piles of old papers EVERYWHERE. When I walk into my office, I think “This is unacceptable.” Yet the clutter remains. So it must be acceptable to me after all, or I would have done something about it, right? Our founding fathers wrote very wise words in the Declaration of Independence. They said, “Men will suffer evils while they are sufferable….” When these brave men had had enough, they took action. When you’ve had enough, you will take action. A friend of mine says it this way: “When the nail hurts bad enough, you will get off of it.” And it’s okay to take eensy weensy baby steps toward creating better circumstances for yourself and your loved ones. Just take ‘em.
So what if we could change some of these things for the better? My previous sermon—delivered here, by the way almost exactly a year ago—addressed my choice to stop ‘requiring’ my Father to treat me with they sort of respect I felt I was due. I realized that I had to let go of my need to have Dad’s acceptance and that I also must accept him RIGHT where he was, warts and all, and allow him to be HIS own person. Needless to say, the nature—the very fabric—of our relationship improved dramatically from that point forward. All it took was my choice to think differently about my relationship with my Dad…to have a different attitude about him and to BEHAVE differently.
So I want to invite you to do some “possibility thinking” with me and let’s play the “what if” game…Think of a close relationship that you currently share with someone else…perhaps it is with a parent, a child, maybe your spouse, your boss or another co-worker, a friend, a sibling, etc. And think of a way that this particular relationship is unsatisfying to you. Ask yourself this: What if I approached this relationship differently? What could I do that would bring more satisfaction to me and the other person? Whatever that is, imagine it for a moment and then write it down on your paper.
(pause)
Now think of a habit that currently enslaves you. They say we make our habits, and then our habits make us. I think that is SO true. So pick a habit that no longer serves you well … and think of a way you could alter that habit so that you are back as the master. Most experts agree that it takes at least 21 days in a row to establish a new habit. They also say we usually simply REPLACE old habits with new ones. I thought I would try that, so I’ll give you my personal example. About four weeks ago, as I was contemplating this sermon, and knowing I was going to ask you to choose a habit to change, I decided to do this myself. Some of you know that I teach Biology at Tarrant College and that I prefer to teach the evening classes because I am a major night owl. I used to be in the habit of leaving school late in the evening (9:30-10:00 or so) and stopping at the Sonic on my way home—getting a hamburger, tater tots, and a diet Coke. That habit was most definitely NOT serving me well. So, about a month ago, I decided to not do that anymore. In fact, I cut out ALL hamburgers and fried potatoes. I didn’t cut out the occasional pizza and I didn’t cut out combo burritos from Taco Bueno, but I did cut out hamburgers and tater tots. And you want to know what? I now pass the Sonic on my way home and don’t give it a second thought. I see myself as a person who just doesn’t eat hamburgers and fries. Occasionally, this choice is inconvenient—it is so easy to just zip into the drive-through—but I have stuck to my guns. It feels good to be triumphant. And you want to know what else? My clothes fit differently—like Better. So go ahead and write down a habit that you KNOW isn’t serving you well and write something you CAN do and are WILLING to do differently that will work in your favor.
(pause)
Here’s our last “what if” exercise. I want you to think of a time that you consciously chose to make a change…that DID improve a particular situation. You might have chosen to leave a job or a spouse. You might have chosen to go ahead and apply for that suweeet job. Perhaps you finally had that really difficult conversation with a family member or co-worker and you cleared the air to everyone’s relief. Whatever it is, write it down and write a word or two that describes how you felt after you took action.
(pause)
Now you have considered some things you can do—or stop doing—that just might bring about positive change in your life and the lives of those around you. You know a couple of specific things to try AND the last thing you wrote is your evidence that “it can be done.” You’ve done it before! You are capable of making positive changes in your life!
Now, I ask you this: What are you waiting for? Take the new road—the one you have traveled less. I encourage you to take some time and ask yourself these questions: Is this choice/are these choices still serving me well? Could I make different choices and improve my situation? What could I become if I was willing to make different choices? What if I stood up for myself? What if I finally asked for the things I really want? What if I dare to expect the best from myself and those around me? I give you a quote from Leo Buscaglia’s book Love: What life is all about…: “Loving oneself [means] a genuine interest, caring, concern and respect for oneself. To care about oneself is basic to love. Man loves himself when he sees himself with accuracy, genuinely appreciates what he sees, but is especially excited and challenged with the prospect of what he can become.” (pp. 95-96 )
I want to wrap up with some simple questions: Who are you? Who do you want to become? Are you willing to make the necessary changes? Will you decide to move out of your current rut and learn from your experiences? Are you willing to take a few risks so that you can live to your fullest potential? What greatness is within you that, with some cultivation and careful choices, could burst forth into the world and bring joy, peace, and prosperity into your existence and the lives of others? What do you really want your life to look like? Who will you have to become in order to bring about these circumstances?
The fabulous and wise Jim Rohn, a noted business philosopher and motivational speaker, says most people fail to move forward or improve because they are stuck in either the regrets of the past or the routine of the present (I say, why not both!). If the change you envision seems too daunting (like cleaning my office seems to me), I suggest you just pick a small place and start your work there. Just try something new for 3 weeks and see how your circumstances change. Cultivate a new habit that will help you get where you want to go. You really can do it. Especially when you approach the change with realistic expectations. Rome wasn’t built in a day, so you’re probably not going to lose 50 pounds this month or suddenly become the ideal spouse, parent, top salesperson, or whatever, next week. In our “immediate-gratification” society, we tend to want something NOW or think it’s not worth pursuing. But if you can make steady, measurable progress in reasonable time, you CAN change your life. The young man once asked, “How do I get to Mount Olympus?” The wise old man replied, “To get to Mount Olympus, you must make sure every step you take is in that direction.”
Some of you may be thinking “I don’t need to change. You’re thinking like spinach-eating Popeye, saying “I yam what I yam and that is all that I yam.” Well, so be it. That’s your choice, right? But I submit to you that you don’t have to be sick to get better. Business coach John Fuhrman says this: “If you are unwilling to change, you have already reached your maximum potential.” Yowch. With change comes opportunity. If you change your thinking, you can change your life. Were you born to lose, or were you born to win? I say you were born to win, but the choice is up to you!