#005 – How to Make Better Choices

Pardon me while I interrupt your television program! Making better choices expands your awareness.

I was tired and about to go to bed, but I know that if I leave the dirty dishes in the sink the cats will be all over them when the lights go off. FYI…cats and onion…don’t go well together. Now, my wife was watching The Bachelor, go figure, and I didn’t want to make too much noise in respect for that. Five seconds into the dishes I hear, “Oh my god” coming from the couch. It was under her breath…nothing crazy. But, none the less a reaction I didn’t appreciate for multiple reasons we’re about to explore.

We’ve all been here countless times. Let’s take a look at both sides of this equation so we can fully understand what’s going on here and how to turn a negative into a positive by making better choices.

The Dishwasher

I get up off the couch, maybe I was watching The Bachelor, maybe I wasn’t and I see the dishes. I then decide I need to clean said dishes. I quickly run through a few thoughts first:

• I need to do these dishes because of the damn cats

• I don’t want to make too much noise

• I don’t really feel like doing these dishes

• I’m tired

• I’m hungry

• Only the first three on this list are important

Then I hear, “Oh my god” coming from the TV room. My initial reaction is frustration. Here I am doing the dishes for all the reasons above, dishes she ate off as well. Meanwhile, she’s over on the couch being annoyed at my kindness and no doubt assuming that I never even considered that it would make all this noise and get in the way of her TV watching. The result of all my thought is negative and it’s a bad choice.

The TV Watcher

Let’s get the couch’s point of view. My wife is tired. She’s watching her show. One that she’s been watching for an hour now so she feels her activity takes precedent over mine. She immediately gets annoyed enough to express it out loud. Here it comes, “Oh my god.” Her husband then says, “What was that?” I forgot to mention that I said that earlier. After all, she doesn’t carry around both of my stones in her purse…just one stone.

Recognize the “Bad Choice”

So, what do we have here? Two people annoyed at one another because they chose to be. What I call, reacting by default. This happens when you activate your programmed response to a situation because this is how you’ve always reacted in the past. And this goes for both of us. The trick in raising your awareness is to first RECOGNIZE that you just made a negative choice and that you have the power to make a different one. This is the most difficult part because we’re not used to doing this. We just glaze right over the choice, making it again and again throughout our lives while the idea of the better choice never comes along.

Replace With the “Better Choice”

The second part would be to REPLACE the negative choice or emotion in this case, with a positive one. For this example I would recognize that I was feeling frustrated for not being appreciated for my efforts in the kitchen and then replace that thought with remembering how difficult of a week my wife just went through, which automatically generates an emotion of love.

Love or a variation of love is always the goal here.

On my wife’s side, instead of becoming annoyed of my generous activities in the kitchen, she would have recognized this negative emotion and replaced it with love for her husband because of how much work he does and his insight into the cats imminent nocturnal activities.

If you use this technique of RECOGNIZE/REPLACE over and over again, eventually it will start to innately happen. So often we find ourselves reacting in ways we shouldn’t, simply because it’s the way we’ve always done it. Stop the destructive loop your in. Break the old habits that no longer serve you and make better, more aware choices that will gradually raise your vibration. After all, that is the goal here. To become more conscious and in doing so, raise our vibration.

We are the energy of love. That is our natural state. To be otherwise only goes against the flow of energy within our being.

PS – My wife is amazing and in no way is a couch potato. We share responsibility equally and love each other very much.

In Gratitude...Kerr