The Gift of Choice

“There are so many gifts
Still unopened from your birthday
There are so many hand-crafted presents
That have been sent to you by God.
The Beloved does not mind repeating,
‘Everything I have is yours.’
There are so many gifts, my dear,
Still unopened from your birthday.” (Hafiz)

The power to discover your voice is found in the potential that was given you at birth. You have many birth-gifts: talents, capacities, privileges, intelligences, opportunities. These require your choice and effort and offer you unlimited growth and potential.

“All children are born geniuses; 9,999 out of every 10,000 are swiftly, inadvertently degenuisized by grownups” Buckminster Fuller.

There are three important gifts: freedom and the power to choose, natural laws and principles, and our four intelligences.

Our First Birth-Gift: The Freedom to Choose

One of the most powerful and liberating truths is: we are free to choose.

“The history of free man is never written by chance but by choice—their choice.” Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Fundamentally we are the product of choice, not nature or nurture. Nature and nurture influence us powerfully, but they do not determine our destiny.

“Your power to choose the direction of your life allows you to reinvent yourself, to change your future, and to powerfully influence the rest of creation.”

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and power to choose our response. In those choices lie our growth and our happiness.”

The size of that gap may be influenced by your upbringing and nature, but it is there. The more you exercise your freedom to choose, the larger the gap becomes.

“The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail not notice, there is little we can do to change; until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds.” R.D. Laing

We are response-able, therefore we are responsible. There is no excuse.

There are many things over which we have no control. However, when we control those things over which we do have control, we can minimize or eliminate the effects of the negative forces in our lives beyond our control.

You can become a “transition person” who stops bad traits, characteristics and habits from being passed on to the next generation. You can also be a “transition person” in your organization, minimizing or even reversing negative influences from your boss or coworkers by the choices you make.

“One ship drives east and another drives west
With the self same winds that blow.
‘Tis the set of the sails,
And not the gales,
That tells us the way to go.
Like the winds of the sea are the ways of fate;
As we voyage along through life,
‘Tis the set of a soul
That decides its goal,
And not the calm, or the strife.” Ella Wheeler Wilcox


From: The 8th Habit, by Stephen Covey, pages 41-46.

Greatness or Mediocrity

Every person has an inner longing for greatness and contribution. Our souls are not satisfied with mediocrity or failure. We desire to make a difference. It is only when we let the world beat this passion out of us that we settle down for less than what we can be.

When asked why he was willing to work hard to change his organization after 30 years of military service instead of retiring, a Colonel said that when his father died he made him promise not to waste his life like he did but to make a difference. The Colonel had been planning to retire and relax, but his father’s dying words inspired him to be a change catalyst.

We all must choose whether to have a good life or a great life, a good day or a great day.

Robert Frost wrote, “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”

Everyone chooses one of two roads in life: the broad, well-traveled road to mediocrity or the other road to greatness and meaning. The path to mediocrity straightjackets human potential while greatness unleashes and realizes human potential. You either live out the cultural software of ego, indulgence, scarcity, comparison, competitiveness, and victimism or you rise above the negative cultural influences and choose to become the creative force of your life.


Adapted from The 8th Habit, by Stephen Covey.