Welcome to Choose You. Enjoy reading the chapter that has helped so many get started on their journey to their best self!



Introduction


Leadership expert John C. Maxwell has said, “You make your choices and then your choices make you.”


This book is about moving those choices that have the greatest potential impact on our lives from a latent standpoint to an active standpoint. It is about helping you become more conscious of the active choices that can move you towards the person you choose to be. We will also explore how to condition yourself to make those choices again and again so that you are consistently building on successes of the past as opposed to working too hard just to regain previously hard won lost ground.


When skills grow, confidence builds. When confidence builds, mindset grows. When our mindset grows we choose to grow our skills. It is an interconnected circle. Mindset without ability does us little good. Skills without the proper mindset are useless. It starts with mindset, ends with mindset, and ultimately we have to DO something, i.e. use our skill, at some point in the circle because without movement there is no change in our reality.


Making an in-Active Choice does not mean that you have made a bad decision. It is worth asking yourself though: Did you truly evaluate the decision based on those things that are most important to you and your life? We have all made active choices in our past that we can learn from to help us make better ones in the future.


I wrote Active Choices for a simple and specific purpose:

I intend to use the lessons I have learned from the Active Choices of my own past to empower me to make the future I dream of my present reality.



By Definition:

Active adjective \ˈak-tiv\

-involving action or participation


Choice noun \ˈchȯis\

-the act of picking or deciding between two or more possibilities




CHAPTER ONE: CHOOSE YOU


Rule #1: Take care of yourself first.


Before you do anything else you need to take care of yourself.


Let’s start with first things first. If you’ve ever traveled on an airplane you’ve heard the flight attendants do their presentation about all the things you need to do, and be prepared for, in case of an emergency. Maybe you tune this part out and are either reading, playing on an electronic device before you have to power it off, or attempting to fall asleep already to make the time pass faster, but it has some good general wisdom to share.


An important part of the speech is a short section that talks about what to do if the masks drop from the ceiling. They always tell you to put your mask on first, and then to help others. While it is not said outright, it is implied that if you don’t put your mask on, and try to help others first, you may pass out, and will not be able to help anyone else. This is especially true if you are traveling with someone incapable of doing it himself or herself, like a young child. The mother’s instinct is to help the child first, but if she is unconscious, she won’t be able to help them at all.


Take care of yourself first or you will be no good to anyone.


So where does one begin this Rule #1 stuff? Great question! I think for each person it may be different. It requires a certain amount of self-knowledge. Are you someone that has to have 8 hours of sleep to function? Are you someone that has to workout, run, or do some sort of physical activity to relieve stress? What are your eating habits? Do you eat Doritos and drink Coke at lunch because you think you don’t have time for anything else? What about your personal finances? Do you feel out of balance if you don’t know your checking account balance to the penny? How important to you is your faith? Does not going to church make you edgy? How about your personal relationship with your chosen partner? Do you feel out of balance when you don’t know where you stand with them, or haven’t spoken with them when you’re having an issue?


There are many questions that you can ask yourself to discover the core pillars of your life. In the “Choose 100% Effort” chapter we’ll discuss a method to provide a wonderful filter to help you decide what’s most important to you, what your core pillars are.


While you and I will explore some of these areas in this book, I always recommend stepping back and asking yourself where they fit in the whole of your life. Think about a time in your life where you may have had a strong foundation in multiple areas. You were working out, AND eating right, AND getting sleep, AND enjoying your chosen profession, AND in a great relationship, AND etc. ….. How did you feel? Did you feel light on your feet? Did you feel like there was nothing you couldn’t do? No matter what hurdle came your way you easily handled it? You felt like you were in “the zone”.


We don’t make the Active Choice today because there isn’t any instant gratification. Our brains are hard wired to react to pain and pleasure. Making an Active Choice today doesn’t move you far enough away from the pain, and there isn’t enough pleasure (personal satisfaction) to support the decision. It’s not about “moving away” from pain quickly. It’s about building away. It’s about making so many positive Active Choices that you have actually insulated yourself from the pain. If you take a close look at your life when you were feeling great, it’s probably because you were so far away from painful times that you didn’t feel emotionally attached to any of them. Active Choices builds not only a foundation for you, it also builds walls that lead you in the direction you want to go. Then, when you have dark days, and feel that there is no guiding light in your present, you can feel the walls and remember the direction that you had set for yourself. This means that “yesterday you” created a “today you” that was safe guarded against the pain, to ensure that your future held what you chose, not just what life brought you.


This is exactly what Active Choices is all about. It’s about knowing yourself well enough that you are making small, and sometimes extremely critical and crucial, decisions on a daily basis. It’s about being conscious of the fact that you need to get 8 hours sleep, and turning off the TV and not watching “one more show”. Or that you feel better when you eat healthy so you take the time to go to the grocery store and fill your cupboards with fresh fruits, vegetables, and healthy snacks, and not chips, soda and ice cream. These decisions build, strengthen, and widen the foundation for you to live the life you choose. These choices move you to live more in “the zone” so that you can take your life to a higher level and begin to live the life you’ve dreamed of until now. The life that deep down in a place you haven’t shared with anyone, not even those closest to you, you knew you could live, you knew you deserved to live.


Now think about a time when you didn’t have a good foundation. When a shoelace breaking would send you into a tizzy. You had little patience, and seemed to be always frustrated, worried, or upset about something. Maybe you are in that place right now where you are off your foundation and out of the zone.


We all end up here at some point in our lives. People unfortunately become so consumed with answering the question of “How did I end up here?” that they don’t make Active Choices to move away from this mindset and move back to their foundation. It is certainly important to pay attention to the “how” so that you don’t end up repeating history over and over. It just needs to be part of the whole, and not the entire question.


Most people who have already gone through a significant difficult life event will tell you that the crucial lesson they learned is knowing they have both the ability, and a process, to get back on their feet. The first time people go through this process is usually the hardest. They don’t have the skills, or a road map, to get back on their feet. They haven’t had to do it before. Once they do get back on their feet, they have the confidence they can do it again.


If you count yourself among those who have gone through a rebound, and feel that you developed skills you could use if you were in that situation again, that’s great! What are you doing with those skills today? When was the last time you exercised them? Skills, like muscles, can grow or fade depending on the frequency of use. Have you grown comfortable with your day-to-day life and think that you won’t need them anytime soon? When did you stop using them? Where would your life be today if you continued to do those things every single day?


Rule #1 also exists to give you permission to take care of yourself. Most people fear success. They fear getting what they want. They are truly afraid to ask for what they want in life because they think that will take away from others. I see this as a “ + “ or “ – “ or question. We fear if we "add" to ourselves that it is somehow "subtracting" from others. In actuality, "adding" to yourself, "adds" to others. A better you makes the world a better place.


I cannot state this any simpler, or more powerfully than one of my favorite passages, written by Marianne Williamson:


“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people will not feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone and as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give others permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” -- Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love



Let’s say for a minute that you are the mother of small children. Your time is consumed with driving them to school, school projects, sports practices, birthday parties, etc. When you’re not doing that you are feeding them, reading them books, doing laundry, etc. There is no free time. You are afraid that being selfish will somehow hurt all of this. You fear that your children will be less attended to because you are taking time for yourself. However following rule #1, if you TRULY would do ANY thing for your children.... would you be willing to be selfish now in order to give more to them later on? Your children need their "mommy" now, and they are REALLY going to need their "mom" later on..... If you haven’t taken care of Rule #1 who will you be as what they need from you changes? Will the best version of you live only in the past, before they were born because that’s the last time you stopped caring for yourself at a high level?


Putting You first, taking care of yourself first, and actively choosing to do so will not be easy. In the beginning no one will notice. Then after a while people will begin to perceive a change as growth occurs in you and they will realize that you are doing for yourself and not for them. This may cause stress, and is often where most people stop taking care of themselves. Their actions tell us they do not value themselves and Rule #1 as much as they value the opinions of others. They don’t fight through the stress when that is exactly what they should be doing. In the “Choose Not To Stop Short” chapter we discuss the power of momentum, and residual benefits that begin to happen when you are consistent long enough with positive, and powerful Active Choices. Those of us who reach this stage start seeing a world of possibilities and begin reaching for new heights, new goals, new visions of ourselves and who we can become and what we can do in the world. You are now taking care of yourself actively, and it has become seemingly effortless. Now other people start seeing the change in you and start doing it for themselves. You have become an inspiration to others you didn’t even intend to be.


You, at the highest level you can be, are a lighthouse. Your light gives direction to others. By Actively Choosing yourself, a process is demonstrated that they can duplicate. Your foundation has become so wide that it supports others when needed. Your friends, family, co-workers, and everyone around you see that by taking care of yourself, and taking time to ADD to yourself, you have more energy for others, more wisdom, patience, time, and most importantly, more value to them.



Feed your brain first.


Part of taking care of You first is taking the time to better yourself. Being better is not just quitting a bad habit, or starting a new exercise routine, or eating better. This actually is a bit backwards. All actions begin as thought. In the book “As A Man Thinketh” by James Allen we learn that we create the world around us in our mind. The best way to expand our minds so that we can create a better world is by feeding the brain, first before we begin to take action. Think of an area of your life you would like to enhance then start feeding your brain knowledge in that area.


I am an avid reader. Not being able to read as many books as I would like to almost haunts me. For every book I read I hear about two more. Taking time to read is something that I do almost daily, and if I go more than a couple of days in a row without reading I get a little edgy. For many years reading was an escape. It was something that I did before I could fall asleep at night. Sometimes I was so exhausted I could only read a page or two, and sometimes I would read a hundred plus pages before I would shut the book. During a one-week vacation I read over 1000 pages while sitting on an oceanfront porch, making that one of the most memorable and relaxing vacations I ever had.


As I began to practice Rule #1 I found myself reading less brain candy books, as I refer to them - romance, mystery, legal thrillers, etc. I started reading more brain food on subjects such as mindset, courage, business, history and entrepreneurism. Give most children the choice between candy and cauliflower and they will choose candy. Our inner brain-child makes the same choice. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing bad about brain candy. In fact those books are some of my favorites and I’ve read many of them multiple times. They please my brain, but they don’t feed my brain. They weren’t growing me. They were entertaining me. When I made the Active Choice to read books from the “brain food” group I started to see changes in myself. Changes that initially were so slight I didn’t even notice them until I became aware I was having completely different conversations with people in my life.


The education, energy, and different points of view the brain food group gave me became more and more prevalent. I began to recommend them to others. I began reciting things I read in the books that struck me. I began posting things to Facebook that other people found inspiring, intriguing, and interesting. Then I took what stayed with me and found ways to apply it to my everyday life. The more I did this the more I was able to recognize that other people were also beginning to take care of their Rule #1.


That initially slight change became something that I could see reflected in how others saw me. Other people began mentioning books that I had referred to them in passing. Eventually someone would say “well, I could see how much you enjoyed it so I thought I should read it too.” They saw something in me change as I was more vocal about what I read. They weren’t reading these books because I assigned them, or impressed them of all the benefits I’d received. They witnessed my changes and duplicated that in their own lives, because they liked what they witnessed.


A change that seems small at first later becomes an indication of how far you’ve moved toward following Rule #1. I think that when we make a change in ourselves most people DO notice right away. They wait silently to see some thing in you, to see if the change is temporary or permanent. They want to see if you’ll revert back to the person they know, and therefore are comfortable with, or if you’ll continue down this path. Ultimately they’re waiting to see if someone else can break out of their rut and change their life, before they have to work on themselves. It’s so much easier to give yourself permission to do nothing when everyone else around you is doing nothing as well.


Where is your blind spot?


At some point in each of our lives we wake to a new reality that had unconsciously been part of our lives for some time. We think to ourselves, “How could I have missed that this whole time?” At times it’s something small, and most often unimportant in the grand scheme of things. And other times it’s something that is absolutely life changing….. It’s our Blind Spot.


The question remains. Where is your blind spot? How do you avoid having one? Is it possible to NOT have a blind spot on your own? More importantly do you want to live a life where only you are the one evaluating your blind spots?


I’m fortunate to have had trusted mentors, coaches, and advisors, not to mention several close friends, and my life is better because these people saw what was hidden in my blind spot. The perspective of others helps us see through fog, confusion, and uncertainties in our lives. It should be questioned: No matter what position a person holds in your life, will they be able to give you advice that they themselves are not vested in? At the end of the day you are the one that chooses who you listen to, and you are the one who chooses what information you act on. You are also 100% responsible for acting on that information, or not acting on it. The Active Choice is yours and yours alone.


We will take a much deeper look at this in the Choose the People On The Bus chapter.


At times one or more of your choices are so difficult, or unattractive, that it appears there are no choices at all. All of the attractive choices may already be in the past, having missed the right time. There is always a choice. And there is always a “better” and a “worse” category to your Active Choice.


Sometimes in our life there are facts so large and so obviously blocking our paths that they become part of the scenery. Everyone else recognizes them, but for us they hide in the blind spot of our unconscious. This brings about the most difficult AND useful task one person can do when evaluating blind spots: Facing brutal facts head on. In his book “Good to Great” Jim Collins discusses at length different factors that went into making a company go from Good To Great. At some point, each company discussed in his book faced a major challenge. Some chose to fight that challenge with transparent honesty and others did not. As one might expect, those that chose to face challenges head on prospered.


How are our lives much different?


We can say with great certainty that in our lives there will be times where we face major challenges. We are better when we face our challenges head on. Yet, what if we don’t see those challenges coming? Then we rely on those around us to help us maintain a 360-degree perspective on our lives. When they don’t we are crest fallen, we feel betrayed, and we fear trusting advisors again.


I witnessed a great example of facing a challenge head on when I was coaching youth soccer. I can remember speaking with the father of one of the players in a soccer clinic I was instructing. It was a youth development class for kids under 7 or 8 who enjoyed soccer more than 1 day a week, and/or those that had some talent and wanted extra coaching. He told me his daughter really enjoyed the game and wanted to continue to play and train more and she had asked him why she couldn’t be on a travel team. Her father faced her with a brutal honesty that most parents would run from, and yet was the most amazing thing to witness.


He told her she was not good enough and if she wanted to play at that level she had to work harder and improve her skills. She had the mindset, but without the skills necessary she wouldn’t make the travel team. The daughter, a bit of a late bloomer athletically, worked and worked and worked. It would be 6 years before she made the travel team. Two years later she was starting on the travel team at a key position. Eighteen months later she was offered the opportunity to play at the collegiate level. Where would she have ended up if she’d been coddled and “protected” from the truth?


This is just one simple example in a world of many examples where facing things head has greater benefits than attempting to skirt the issue.


Would your advisors care about you enough to tell you the brutal facts? Her father cared enough that he preferred to see her suffer a small disappointment now, rather than set her up for a major disappointment later. The relationship that they had was amazing to watch as they were able to maintain open lines of communication and honesty throughout her teen years, and now into adulthood. The honesty began with his honest actions to her when she was still young. How is it parents deceive children when they are young and are surprised when children begin to deceive them later on in life?


Rule # 1 Recap:


There’s only one person that must follow Rule #1. You. It is your rule. You define it. You are the Sheriff, Judge, and Jury of your own Rule #1. I have learned that the more people I engage in helping me follow Rule #1 the better my life gets. The better my life gets the more I want to follow Rule #1. The better my life gets through making the Active Choice to take care of myself first, the more I know I will be able to provide for those around me. The more my life gets better by making the Active Choice to take care of myself first and my life gets better, the more other people begin to choose to make an Active Choice to take care of their Rule #1.