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Segment 30 - The Power of Choice

Again, from creative live to your choir, your family into the power of the moment to moment choices and what we're going to do this like last segment is kind of pull it all together. You've heard the word choice throughout the entire two days, and sometimes in this day and age, we have so many choices that it can be overwhelming, but also, when we remove choice, we could actually learn to be helpless, and research shows that having the power of choice actually enhances the quality of all life research done by allen langer in the nineteen seventies and nursing homes wanted to see what the difference would be on the impact of people, sense of well being and autonomy and gratitude. When they had the thought that the right of choice was in their hands on one group of the one group of the people that lived there, but basically given the direction that the staff was there to help them and also really make choices for them, the choice has kind of been taken out of their hands. They also had a...

plant that they could take care of, but they were assured that really the staff would take care of it for them, then the second group. Off residents at this home we're told that you are responsible for the choices we want you to be responsible for your life your feedback manners we wanted to take care of a plant but you if you don't take care of it that plan's going to die because really the choice is in your hands in reality there was no difference in attention paid to these beautiful living residents at this home but when allen langer partners came back a year and a half later they notice such a difference in the group that thought they had the power of choice in their hands it's that well being that sense of happiness and flourish she was dramatically higher than the group who can actually has been treated it's the same but their thoughts were that they had no longer were basically the destiny was not in their hands anymore and fifty percent more of the people who thought they had no longer had choice had passed on so the power of a choice is a gift but we have to be mindful enough to make the choices to choose to choose having the port power of choice affects our lives especially when we're mindful the power of mindful choices raises our happiness lowers our blood pressure lowers our risk of heart disease were less like youto have headaches of back aids on we're less likely to be depressed when we know and we make powerful mindful choices so we're seeing here you having the power to choose doesn't necessarily give you the license not to choose when we can choose not to choose, but the moment you make powerful, active choices. It makes the you take responsibility for your life. The power of choice and the big moments and the power of choices in the moment to moment choices to choose is to create to choose is to create your reality at every moment in your life, in your business, in your relationships you have the power of choice, you have the choice to focus and be a full finder or a benefit finder looking for the good I'm trying to take a lead, my girls here you have the chance to take the good for granted or appreciate too good it's not working so well for wei have the choice of how we view failure? Do we look at it as we failed our opportunity to learn we have the power of choice to avoid our challenges or to feel the fear and do them anyway? We have the choice to be cynical and sarcastic or the child choice to be open and sincere in and meet the world with empathy. We have the choice to overlook our potential or to see the potential we have the power of choice to accept our emotions and be one with them or reject devotions we have the power of choice to be mean and dismissive open nice and kind we have the power of choice to overlook life's treasures or be mindful ofthe the wonder we have the power of choice to move from a place of gratitude oh I have a point a choice to go looking for what is not working in our lives every moment in our lives we have a choice and all these moments add up to a lifetime the power of choice is a gift that many people don't have you want to live the way we want to be remembered lived the way you want to be remembered I sang badly yesterday how do you want to know how do you measure the life of a man? I'm not going to do a repeat right now but how do you want your life to matter? Is it the money or is it the moment is it being off service? Is it the letters after a name or is it the difference we could make in the world? There's a beautiful book called change of heart by jodi pico as in the space between yes and no there is a lifetime it's the difference between the path you walk and the one you leave behind it's the gap between who you thought you could be and who you really are it's the leg room for the lies you may tell yourself in the future but for me the most powerful line is the space between yes and no the power off the pause is a lifetime those moment to moment choices all add up to the big choices what kind of life do we want what kind of life do you want to live into? Do you want to move into a life of happiness and joy and flourishing and sharing that with those around us and one of the choices that we have to make in a life that's three kinds of choices is big life choices choosing your calling we're going to talk a little bit that about that in a moment choosing to help contribute to the world big one choosing to be true to yourself not always easy but a big choice that we have we're going to be true are we going to do what other people think we should be doing specific choices? Are we going to choose a positive outlet? Look are we going to be a benefit seeker or look for the negative we're going to choose to appreciate appreciate the good so that god appreciates will be a fault finder are we going to have to choose to have humor and play in our life? We'll forget what it's like toe play like kids and how we're going to view our failures are we gonna learn to fail or fail to learn and then there was every moment choices that we spoke about choosing to breathe in the good choosing toe exhale with gratitude, choosing to appreciate my life in thiss my moment and this moment and this moment all these choose choices add up to the sum of our life. We can choose to reframe how we look at our work. We were talking about life's constraints not all of us right now at this moment can have our passion be the same as our work. Some of us can, but we can all find passion in our life and whether your work is a job, a career or a calling, you can still find meaning within your work on dh change the entire energy off your workplace just by living and being the change whether your work is a job right now and you just need to make money to pay the bills, and that for many of us is a reality. I have bills, I have kids, I want to put through college, so my work right now is really a job it's not my calling, I do it for the money because I need the money to pay for my life constraints right now, nothing wrong with that, maybe I'll work is a career, we love it, we're going up that that ladder of success, we have that gold that we want, we want to progress and maybe only reached that goal but we were gonna look to another company it's our our career path is really strong for us great stuff and maybe the work is our calling maybe we have the luxury and the gift that what we do matches the life we want to see others live that we work as though it doesn't even feel like work and sometimes we move in and out of all three I've had moments in my life when it's been a job it's like it maybe have started out is like a career but it kind of shifted into a job but I still needed to stay in that job the bills and and that was fine so I wasn't going to find my passion in that particular environment but I could find passion, purpose and meaning in that environment and also outside of the environment sometimes it's moved into a career when I first started fitness it was really ah job on then it kind of became a career I was really lucky to be one of those people that could make a full time living from doing great finds and squalling around the world who knew I mean how blessed um I but at that point it was a career that I loved and I still I'm so grateful for but this is my calling price price this is the work oh it must be in our family genes this's the fifty percent I can't control, I'm good, but this work to me is so meaningful that if it could touch one person's life back to me has made a difference. But whether our jobs are calling up passion, our career or a job, we can still transform how we see that we can still flip the switch. Even if it's a job we can flip the switch from this is something I have to to something I get to dio we still can approach ah job with gratitude, we have a job even at work, we can transform the energy, the corporate culture off what is important, what bills and bearings meaning to that day we can go out and change our social interactions with our colleagues. I mean, I'm guilty of this, I pin it jim's where I've been working at them for years and I really don't go out of my way to interact with people I see every day I could have been much more of an impact and change not just to their lives, but to me viewing that as a job to shifting it, maybe to a calling, but I never gave it the space to do that. We could go out for lunch with someone at work that maybe we've passed in a million times and we never engaged you know I'd love to get to know you sit down and we have so much in common and right then your experience has just changed we confined community and engaging relationships at work should we choose toe look for them, we can organize group events at work we could do a gratitude moment we could do a love bucket don't know how that goes over his corporate culture, but I think we should try and again the number one predictor of wellbeing is relationships and if you think how many hours you spend at your job or your career that's the time that should we choose we could foster great meaningful relationships small changes in our life flipping the switch from I have to to get teo can make magnificent changes in our overall day today, moments changing just thirty minutes off our day. What do we do re first get out of bed? Writing down three things that we look forward to takes less than a minute could change your entire eight hours choosing to engage in a conversation with someone that you've seen for the past six months but really have never had the time or the inclination to get to know could lead until flourishing friendship could maybe that person could end up being in your choir we can change the perception ofthe our work by bringing mindfulness to the inner dialogue we have about our work and it starts with flipping the switch from I have to to get teo there's a two hour intervention that we're not going to do right now wave basically would have to do a whole another course, but will you take a job if it's your job description right for now it's paying the bills and you rewrite it as a calling you take what it is that you're doing us a job and you spend the time you don't have spent two hours but you spend the time writing it down as though it's your calling changing the mindset of how you look at your day today eight hours at the job and they show that it raises your sense of well being immediately on that sense of wellbeing last up to six months after the psychological benefits really impact just by how we place our focus small changes can bring out significant changes in our well being and that trickle effect of changing that perception off your job goes into all areas of your life. Happiness is not something you put in the container it's contagious and your happiness spreads on other areas of your life into other people's life read somewhere happiness is like jam you cannot spread it on yourself without getting a little bit on everybody else and joy is like that and gratitude I love this by bishop t d jakes if you can't figure out your purpose, figure out your passion for your passion will lead you right into your purpose and we talk about purpose driven lives adding life toe our years and is taking the time to sit and maybe not know maybe just sit in the not knowing of what are passionate yes, it will come to you in those quiet moments the power off the end happiest people enjoy the present moment and also have meaningful future based goals it's the moment the present benefit of the pleasure of this moment and also the meaning the future benefit based in the future experience off the now and meaning in the future moves us towards a happier life. You could be in any profession and enjoy happiness if passion is combined with meaning because it's in those moments you find flow you confined flow in the workplace if you choose to look for it so as you look into the world and how we're going to move this work forward in our own lives hopeful in those around us we're going to revisit some of the world by martin seligman again one of the thought leaders, if not the thought leader and parts of psychology and he's come up with this acronym perma which account like the building blocks toe happiness and well being like with nathaniel brandon, we have the six pillars of self esteem. Perma mix up the building, blocks, toe happiness and well being. And you could turn to your book. And I want you guys to write this down because this is important stuff. And on page eighteen, she says without her glasses. Excuse me one second I left right now I would like you to write these down. P is for positive emotion is for engagement. R is your relationships. M is meaning and purpose and a is accomplishment. Don't you remember back the very first segment we did? We can have pulled the definition off happiness. The dictionary which places said being happy, not super helpful, but in posits I college they kind of expanded that too flourishing. And it is modern seligmann's belief that these five things together help us move into a life that is flourishing positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning and purpose and accomplishment. The character strength that we discovered last night and we discovered this morning are the backbone ofthe perma. And he we've listed all the character strikes that you would see on that test s so no one. I just noticed was type o but it's very small so that it was like she was a finder. Okay, but no actually it's not it says hot may instead of hope, but hope is moving so we can hop to happiness. There's the benefit find alright, so it's, where we work from us strength, that is where we find an optimistic life. We cannot move from a place of optimism when we focus on what is wrong with us again, to remind you we're not ignoring what needs to be strengthened, but we're going to place all focus on our strength and it's through perm er and our strength that we become creators of the future and not prisoners of our past. We look and project off best future selves forward with hope so again is taking these strengths and hopping forward into a life full of joy and meaning every moment as up to our future. I'm just this is makes me happy. This is just the colors and the butt today do something that your future self will thank you for were often waiting for the perfect time. The perfect moment I'll do it tomorrow we don't have a guaranteed time on this planet, now is the time.