Everything is a choice.

This is life’s greatest truth and its hardest lesson. It is a great truth because it reminds us of our power. Not power over others, but the often untapped power to be ourselves and to live the life we have imagined. It is a hard lesson because it causes us to realize that we have chosen the life we are living right now. It is perhaps frightening for us to think that we have chosen to live our life exactly as it is today. Frightening because we may not like what we find when we look at our lives today.

But it is also liberating because we can now begin to choose what we will find when we look at our life in the tomorrows that lie unlived before us. What will you see when you look at your life ten years from now? What will you choose? Life is a choice.

You have chosen to live this day. You have chosen to read this article. You have chosen to live in a certain city. You have chosen to believe certain ideas. You have chosen the people you call friends. You choose the food you eat, the clothes you wear, and the thoughts you think. You choose to be calm or restless, you choose to feel appreciative or ungrateful. Love is a choice. Anger is a choice. Fear is a choice. Courage is a choice. You choose. Sometimes we choose the-best-version-of-ourselves, and sometimes we choose a-second-rate-version of ourselves. Everything is a choice, and our choices echo throughout our lives…and into history…and on and on into eternity. Most people never fully accept this truth. They spend their lives arguing for their weaknesses, complaining about their lot in life, or blaming other people for their weaknesses and their lot in life. You may argue that you are forced to live in a certain city or drive a certain car, but it is not true. And if it is, it is true only temporarily and because of a choice you have made in the past.

We choose, and in doing so, we design our lives.

Some may say that we do not choose our circumstances. You’d be surprised. We have much more power over the circumstances of our lives than most men and women would ever admit. And even if circumstances are thrust upon us, we choose how we respond to those circumstances. Others may argue that they did not choose the country they were born in or the parents they were born to. How do we know we didn’t choose these things? We are all endowed with free will. Did we not have this free will before we were born? Perhaps one day we will realize that we have chosen much more than we have even imagined.

I hope that day is today.

For the day we accept that we have chosen to choose our choices is the day we cast off the shackles of victimhood and are set free to pursue the lives we were born to live. Learn to master the moment of decision and you will live a life uncommon.