Last year during a discussion in a Moms group the topic of “choice making” came up. I remember sitting in the circle thinking, “I don’t have choices in my day. I have two kids totally dependent on me and I do the same things every darn day…there is no choice in that!”
However, as the discussion continued, I was reminded of all the choices I actually do have! I choose to get up early before the kids to shower peacefully. I have the choice to eat breakfast with them, most days. I make the choice to work the number of hours I do, so I can include a little “play time” in my day but also benefit from some level of income. I choose my family’s daily schedule. I think that half the battle is realizing that I make those choices! It makes me feel more empowered instead of just plain stuck!
What choices do you take for granted? What choices do you not even consider a choice? Realizing that we all have choices, no matter what our days look like, will help us to realize that even guilt is a choice. Now, please don’t get me wrong, at times, the cards are stacked up against us. We travel and have not seen our kids for 5 days, during the week of a big school play, in which our child has the lead……. We leave to go to work, assuring our spouse that he can work from home, peacefully because school drop off is at 8am , and a get a call that there was no school today, so he is stuck with both kids at home for the day, while working…. Guilt just tends to creep inside our minds…our hearts and we even say, “Oh, I feel so guilty.”
But let’s try to see guilt as a choice from now on. We may feel like there are no other options than to feel guilty for a specific situation. And that is okay, but sometimes, we can choose not to feel the guilt. I believe it can be a choice. Next time you could say, “I feel so guilty”…stop yourself and determine if that is a choice you want to proactively make! We have the ability to make this choice to feel guilty or not. We are not stuck, even thought we may feel that way! We just have to exercise that choice.
