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Home / Personal Development / Goal Setting
How Choices Affect Our Lives
By:CHARLES M. BONASERA
They’re always mad at me. I’m always doing something wrong. They never tell me when I do something right. They don’t really love me. They love my little sister more and better than they love me. That’s o.k. I’ll bet if I ran away they’d miss me. Or if I died they’d feel so bad that they would cry and cry for me to return. Then, maybe they would love me more. When I grow up, I’m going to be the bravest fireman in the world. I’m going to move away from this house and live by myself and I’ll be able to do whatever I want and nobody will tell me what to do anymore. When I grow up, I’m going to do everything that I can’t do now…eat everything I can’t eat now…and be able to tell other people what they can and cannot do. I’m going to be the boss of everything and everyone.
As a child once myself, as a therapist working with many children and as a father and grandfather of seven, the above scenario would not be uncommon banter for a child to experience and verbalize to him or herself when they are feeling unloved or unappreciated by their parents. The fantasy is a way of “getting even” for something that’s out of their control…something that they need more than the breaths that they take…LOVE.
Without love, our lives are empty and meaningless…whether we’re a child who’s been chastised and feels unloved or an adult who doesn’t feel that those closest to them don’t appreciate and love them for who they are. Many of us grow up with those same feelings hounding us that led us to meander into fantasies of “payback” for the hurt that we might have felt as a child. The scene has changed but the person’s feelings and perspective hasn’t.
There’s one thing missing…a very important aspect of our enjoying the privilege of becoming an adult…the ELEMENT OF CHOICE. We didn’t have many, if any, choices as children. The sources of our well-being were our parents or parent-figures and we were entirely dependent on them to have our needs met. As we grow into adulthood, many people…in fact most people…tend to forget that with adult status comes choices. Apart from not realizing this fact and therefore not being able to get “out of the rut” of feeling choice less and defeated and unloved, many adults were never taught about choices. They weren’t taught what they were, how to make them and how they influenced their lives. They weren’t taught how choices determined their ability to conduct their lives in a positive manner as well as how they were responsible for all of the choices that they made. They weren’t taught that choices oftentimes can make the difference between happiness and despair.
In a very real sense, a person’s movement into coaching, life management or psychotherapy in order to deal with their issues is like a “growing up” that may have never taken place along with their chronological changes…viz. growing up emotionally. I don’t say that to insult anyone but merely to point up the fact that the lack of awareness of choices can keep us stuck developmentally and emotionally so that we end up believing, thinking and feeling in much the same manner as we did as children. We need to go through the process of recognizing and learning how to use choices to enhance our lives. That enhancement could affect our primary relationships, work situations, friendships and even our recreational lives in order to make them richer and more meaningful. The movement that occurs in coaching, life management or psychotherapy allows people the opportunity to come in touch with what they had missed that is so vitally important to their roles as adults. It enables them to breathe the “fresh air” of having choices in their lives and to be able to realize the dream of what they can “become” at their fingertips. When I grow up, I won’t have to “get even”. Instead, I can enjoy my life and the lives of the people I love and who love me.
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Article keywords: choices, adults, child, life management, love, happiness, thinking, feeling, actions, perception, despair, learning, psychotherapy, coaching, life
Article Source: http://www.articles2k.com
After 40 years of professional psychotherapeutic practice including work with many different sports representations, Charles Bonasera is now a consultant, author and workshop presenter. He has written a book of his compilation of sayings entitled "Mojo Symphony of Thoughts" and has a CD/book entitled "The Mental Side of Golf". Upcoming works are "Competition: A Guide for Parents and Coaches" as well as his book "How In The Hell Did This Happen To Me?" His website is www.charlesbonasera.com.
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