My Right To Choose

A woman’s right to choose is the most controversial topic in politics and religion and maybe in life. Yet, as humans we have the same right and we don’t seem to be aware or even know that it exists.

As humans we have the right to choose! Choose our own paths. Choose the people we surround ourselves with. Choose how we want to serve the world, through our jobs/professions. The choice to be happy or sad or annoying.

Most important we have the right to choose where we invest our energy and the thoughts we think. I have really tried to be aware of my thoughts and how they affect my behavior and energy levels.

When I spent my time thinking about others, and what they are doing, I find myself wanting to be at their level, you know in that —

–-kind of way!

In the end, usually by the end of the day, I’m exhausted. I have no energy to do anything else. All the while, this other person, situation or circumstance has no concern or real affect on my life.

I now choose to put my energy into doing things that affect me directly.

Things like introspecting why I think people will think I’m preaching if I offer my own knowledge and experiences about life? Things like learning, healing, and spending time with my children.

I realized that for a lot of my life, I have put my energy and thoughts into my family. I would cancel my own plans or put things I want to do on the back burner so that I could be there for my parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, whoever. I’m Indian so remember my immediate family is an intimate number of 150 people, true story lol.

I would sometimes drive from Delaware to Long Island all in one day with both kids to attend 2 birthday parties, so I wouldn’t make anyone upset, in the end, I was still upset…at myself. I was upset when I couldn’t stay up long hours or stay engaged in great conversations because my body and my mind were exhausted!

And what’s that quote, oh yeah, “Nothing is worth it, if you aren’t happy.” ~Anonymous

My father is a very experienced, successful, and learned man about life. I think he wanted to spread his lessons to my brother and I to spare us the pain of experiencing our own mistakes or failures. However, growing up I labeled his guidance as controlling.

I even took it upon myself to “protect” my mom. I would ask my mom what activities or things she wanted, and would try to convince my dad to do that. So many of these memories later, I realized about a month ago I was still investing my energy in protecting my mother. My mother, or anyone for that matter, had no idea I was even doing this, hell, I didn’t even know until about a month ago.

My parents recently got a new house and I was grateful when they asked my opinion in decorating it. I chose to spend a lot of my time and energy picking out paint colors and furniture. Until one day, I walked in and noticed that my dad had brought over the furniture from their previous house.

I was upset, because the furniture was very traditional-Indian and it did not fit the contemporary theme of their new house at all. I had spent a lot of time convincing my dad to sell that furniture and in the end, he did what he wanted. (Much like growing up, when he tried to guide us to do something and we did what we wanted anyway! OMG Karma?)

In the moment that he was explaining why he put a huge wooden swing in the center of his foyer, blocking the coat closet, I was thinking about what my mom probably thought. I said to myself, it was none of my business! This is their home, and their relationship, and that it was not my job to protect anyone here. So I practiced my right to choose in that moment, and said, “this house is yours and moms, and you can decorate it however the both of you choose to.”

AHH a weight was lifted! In making that choice I reabsorbed a lot of my improperly invested energy and put it mindfully into my own home. Which helped me clean out my garage, closets and basement in one week. WOAH! Talk about wasted energy in someone else’s pot.

The point is not, don’t help others, or invest your energy in others, or even don’t give advice when someone asks; my point is that I need to be very aware of my energy investments, they are just as important as my financial investments! So Choose wisely!

Practice your right people 😉

Photo Credits:
www.changefromwithin.org
www.youngfreestlouis.com/blog/bad-drivers

November 17th, 2014 Clear Mind