Monday Mindfulness

Cultivating Strength, Joy, Peace & Resilience

Tag Archives: choice


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What a mistake

I don’t make mistakes. Hold on now – I’m not saying I’m perfect!

Actually, I make choices and I make plans founded in my choices.

My plans may result in particular experiences which allow me to make more choices. Some of those choices may produce complicated results and challenges beyond my imagination, but they give me the opportunity to grow and change, perhaps, even heal and thrive.

So, go ahead and call my choices, my challenges, or my experiences a mistake, but to me, it is just living fully.


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Think…love…choose

I don’t have to think like you.

I can leave a space for your thoughts in my mind without compromising my own.

I don’t have to love you.

I can hold a space for you in the sacred abode of love in my heart.

I don’t have to make choices in response to your choices.

I can make space for choices that clears away the clouds of fear, and doubt, and greed.

Being human affords me the opportunity to think, love, and choose.

Grace affords me the space to think, love, and choose freely, kindly, and honestly and leave room for you to do the same.


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It’s not bad, it’s just now

Someone reminded me this week that I am a grown up. As such, I have the capacity to care for myself, even survive on my own, and I have the luxury of absolute choice.

Sure, I know I am a grown up and can make choices but I still have the fear of a child. I fear making choices that will be wrong, cause suffering, or result in bad consequences.

As I further consider my power of choice, I am just now realizing that perhaps there are no right or wrong consequences. There really is no good versus bad. I do not need to avoid a choice because the outcome is not crystal clear or safe enough to follow through on.

I can chose to do or not do anything. Yes it comes with consequences but it also cultivates freedom.

Each consequence is simply another opportunity for choice, an opportunity to play more confidently and creatively with my power to choose.

Karma, choice in action, is not the punishment that results from my choices but the next actions available to me as a result of my choosing.

I do not need to avoid choices or fear consequences any more. I am a grown up. I just need to be ready to make the next choice.


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A pebble in my shoe.

Here I am, walking along, awareness softly tuned to my surroundings.

Without any warning, the easy state of awareness suddenly funnels with precision into the soul of my foot.

A slew of messages instantly travels light lightening through my body alerting me to intense sensation.

There is a pebble in my shoe.

With each step now, I have a choice.

Do I immediately freeze, paralyzed by this unanticipated happening, shutting down, urgently driven to remove the discomfort?

Do I pause, taking notice, receiving the sensations with curiosity and kindness, quietly ascertaining my next step?

Or do I continue walking, noticing, and finding unique learning in every step, even through the unsettledness and unease?

Can I cultivate gratitude for the ability to feel, to move, and motivate, to decide with every step?

Whatever I do, it should be with care, not reacting but receiving, even when unexpected and uncomfortable, a constant reminder of my free will.


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Contrails

Every morning through my window I watch the airplanes carve a path through the sky, a seemingly straight line built of swirling vortices.

The pilots consider themselves on a steadfast course, honed to the coordinates entered.

But as I watch the swath cover the sky, I see that one path dissipates into a thousand threads of opportunity to go in a different direction.

What one perceives as the path another sees as the starting point. A straight line swirls and morphs into a cloud.

There is nothing wrong with the trajectory on which I ride, but I find it quite fun to imagine where else I might go.