There are many possibilities in life.

It’s important to listen to what your life is saying to you.

Coming from deep within, your desires guide you through the possibilities, enabling you to make your choices.*

Just as their are many ways to mix a palette of colours, there are many ways to mix your passions and talents: again and again choices will come to you.  (Or, write out all your skills and passions and values and significant failures and successes on post-its, and see how many ways you can mix these.)

Here are a couple of things which struck me today about the choosings.

At first we’re excited by an attractive and exciting possibility.

Then we see just what our choosings ask of us and we wonder what on earth we’ve done.

At this point, we understand we have to absolutely commit, beyond an intellectual decision played out with lists for and against: we have to connect at a heart level.

Martin Seligman suggests we have to commit to maximising five elements: positive emotion (what we think of as happiness), engagement (when we are lost in the flow), relationships (because life is all about relationships), meaning (as it has to be for a cause bigger than ourselves), and achievement (she have to ship).**

Choosing is not about setting out on a path with a determined destination.  Choices ought not to be hermetically sealed.  It is imperative we continually open our minds and hearts to more.

I believe it’s important for each of us to identify and develop our purpose (element, voice, calling – there are many names for this), but if I do not allow for further choosings, then I starve my purpose of what it needs to be grow and take me to places I cannot imagine in this moment of time, and leading me to further choosings.

‘Yes, the cards are unfairly stacked against too many people.  Yes, there are too many barriers and not enough support.  But no, your ability to create and contribute isn’t determined at birth.  It’s a choice.’^

One of the greatest gifts we can give to others is to open up the possibility to choose and to keep choosing.

(*We’re all so different.  I never cease to find it  wonderful and fascinating to see how people are interested in, and pursue, a panoply of interests and possibilities.)
(**PERMA is his acronym for his suggested “system” of well-being.)
(^From Seth Godin’s Whatcha Gonna Do With That Duck?)