The power of choice

I’ve been a big fan of self-improvement since my early career, mainly because, as a predominantly introverted person, I needed to find strategies to help me navigate what often felt like a very extroverted world.

I remember many years ago a coach talking to me about choice. I must have been going through a challenging time and, if I’m honest, I was probably well into my “why me?” phase. He said something that has stuck with me ever since: you might not have a choice about what’s happening to you, but you do have a choice about how you respond. At the time I remember thinking, how on earth can whatever I was dealing with be seen as a choice? It certainly didn’t feel like one.

Last month I wrote about the part of choice I’m still learning to sit with. This month I want to look at the other side of it, the part I’m learning to put into practice. Because over the years I’ve realised that choice is a lot more nuanced than simply deciding to think differently or look on the bright side.

When I was first diagnosed and told the words “you have Stage 4 cancer”, my immediate response was panic and a sense of doom. Then I needed information. A lot of it. I had questions running around in my head, many of them pretty dark, and for a few days I was completely consumed by what this might mean for my future.

I could have stayed in that panic and sense of doom, but I really didn’t want to sit in those huge emotions. I needed something to do with them, so I started looking for answers to the questions running around in my head. Finding the answers actually brought me some relief. I knew what I was potentially facing and, somehow, having something concrete to work with quietened the noise in my head. I could breathe again.

I’ve since learnt there is some science behind what was happening to me in those early days. Research from neuroscientist Amy Arnsten has shown that acute, uncontrollable stress can affect the part of the brain responsible for things like decision making, planning and emotional regulation. In other words, when we are under extreme stress, our ability to calmly think our way through something can be seriously compromised.

That made me think about the word “choice” quite differently.

I wasn't calmly choosing to panic when I was first diagnosed. My brain and body were responding to something they perceived as an enormous threat. I needed time, information and support before I was in a position to start making decisions about how I wanted to move through it.

Eventually, though, I did have some room to make choices.

Perhaps that's where the real power of choice sits. Not in pretending we can control everything that happens to us, but in recognising that, when we can, we can influence what happens next.

I didn't choose my diagnosis. I can't choose every emotion that comes with it and I certainly can't choose what the future holds. But I can make choices about what I do with what I'm experiencing. I can choose whether I want to keep feeding a particular thought, whether I need to step away from something, whether I need to ask for help or whether I want to keep going around the same thought in my head for the rest of the day.

That doesn't mean I think we should just choose positivity. In fact, I'm increasingly wary of that idea because it can make people feel as though they are somehow failing if they can't find the bright side of a difficult situation.

Sometimes something is just shit. Sometimes you're sad because something is sad. Sometimes you need to be angry. I don't think we need to turn every difficult emotion into a positive lesson.

What I am learning is that there is a difference between feeling an emotion and becoming completely consumed by it.

For me, part of that has been learning to actually name what I'm feeling rather than immediately trying to push it away. I became very good at doing that over the years because it was often easier to just keep going. The problem is that the emotion doesn't necessarily disappear. It just gets parked somewhere until it decides to make itself known again.

Choice isn't a moral virtue. It's a capacity, and that capacity can change.

For me, the useful question has become less about “what should I be choosing?” and more about “what choice is actually available to me right now?”

This is also something I’ve been exploring through Healing Grove. I’m interested in what happens when capable people carry emotional weight for so long that they become disconnected from what they actually need. Particularly people who are very good at getting on with things, looking after everyone else, making decisions and carrying on, even when something underneath the surface isn't quite right.

I'm interested in the space between simply pushing through and reaching breaking point. What happens if we can stop for a moment, understand what's actually going on underneath the surface and create some space to respond differently? Not by pretending everything is fine, and not by forcing ourselves into some artificially positive state, but by becoming a little more aware of what we're carrying and what we might want to do with it.

I don't have this sorted myself. I'm still learning what it means to acknowledge difficult emotions without letting them completely take over, and to recognise when I can make a choice and when I simply need to give myself some space.

When we have the capacity, there may be a small space between what happens and what we do next.

And that is where our choice lives.

The thoughts and story above are entirely my own. AI has been used to help refine the structure and grammar.