It’s easy to feel powerless in this vast and complex world of ours. After all, we are only small individuals out of billions of people. How would we ever think to have any significant impact? More often than not we let ourselves be moved along the currents of the world around us, without really thinking about where they might be taking us. We feel we are lost in a rapid of fast flowing events and random moments, and should be lucky to just keep our heads above the water. And even when we feel lucky to be alive, there’s still this constant nagging feeling that there should be more to life; that this frantic struggle to survive cannot be the sum total of what our life is about. Even when we are relatively successful and come out on top, if all we do is staving off the inevitable end a bit longer, it leaves us with a deep-felt sense of unease and lack of fulfilment.

It doesn’t have to be like this. We don’t have to feel powerless, directionless, and empty. Even when thrown about by the raging waters of life and pulled inexorably forward, we can make choices. More choices, in fact, than we can imagine. Life’s waters are complex, chaotic even, which means there are many moments where possible futures branch off from the mainstream; where even a slight change of direction can lead us to somewhere completely different. It’s in those moments of divergence – the places where one stream becomes 2 or many – that our choices lie. Where the present has many futures, it’s our act of choosing – deliberate, conscious choosing – where we can make a difference. Choice is the power each and every one of us has over the infinite complexity we participate in.

To wield that power with purpose, that’s what gives our lives fulfilment. To experience how we bring about a different future than the one we thought we were caught up in, that’s what make us feel we matter. And to make our choices deliberately, with forethought and as much consideration as possible – even when fully aware that we can only know so much and see so little of what those choices will lead to – that’s what gives us a sense of direction.

To get there we must practice three things: awareness, sense of direction and strength of purpose. With those strengths at hand we can turn our choices into deliberate ones: each choice, however small and seemingly insignificant, a tiny stepping stone on the path that leads us forward to a future of our own making. Deliberate, considered, conscious choice enables us to ride the raging river of life and use its power and speed to our advantage. Deliberate choice transforms us from helpless castaways desperately clinging to driftwood and straws into pilots of out own destiny – working with the river not fighting against it, accepting its vagaries and rapids as gifts and opportunities.

Making our choices deliberate ones requires a guiding framework: something to help us assess our options and select the ones most likely to progress us on the path we choose to travel. We need a belief-system, with values, goals and priorities. Growing up, there are plenty of belief-systems on offer: the cultural constructs of our families, peers, co-workers, teachers, bosses, politicians, religious leaders, …. If we passively adopt what those others offer us – without question or challenge – our choices are theirs, not ours, but they will be applied to our life and steer it where others want it to go.

To really make our choices our own, we need to go on a journey first; a journey into our own feelings, emotions, traumas, habits … That is a journey of discovery, discernment, adjustment, and focus. Do it well, and we will emerge with a belief system that is now truly ours. It will suit our temperament, it will fit us like a well-tailored suit, and most of all it will facilitate a sense of flow, a sense of synchronicity, when we decide and act in harmony with it, and the world starts to arrange itself accordingly.

When we find that momentum and use our choices to carry us forward on our chosen journey, that’s when we become the authors of our own life’s narrative. That’s when we can say “This Is My Story – I wrote this and I live this”.