Volition
I used bibliomancy this morning to come up with the topic for today’s blog post. Bibliomancy is the practice of contemplating a direction to go and then flipping through a book (usually a sacred text) and having your finger land randomly on a word or phrase. This word or phrase provides a path to travel on in search of your solution. I used the dictionary and came up with “Volition.”
Volition as described in Webster’s Dictionary is “An act of willing, choosing and deciding – A conscious choice – Power or capability of choosing.”
Most of our choices are automatically made for us by our patterns (conditioned behaviors). Patterns are wonderful, useful and serve a purpose. For example, I will be eternally grateful for the pattern I have that allows me to jump out of the way of an oncoming bus.
We have some other patterns that don’t seem so glorious on first inspection. We’ve heard the expression that “he/she has a temper.” This person is conditioned to fly off the handle. This pattern was formed for a purpose in response to a situation way back when. The difficulty is that it keeps going on now, even though the original causative factor is long gone. The person finds that any new challenging situation in their life triggers the old way of responding. They have grooved that way of responding and therefore have removed choice from their list of responses.
Choice is a choice we rarely make. We let it make us. Leaving choice to chance is really the height of laziness.
There is an opportunity to choose at any given moment, yet we allow our automatic pilot fly us into the side of a mountain time after time.
“Why do I always do that?” is a question that points up the indolence of ignoring choice.
You always do that because you’ve always done that and then justify it by saying “that’s who I am.” The more accurate answer is that’s who you are conditioned to be.
If you’ve heard something from enough people over the course of your life about a piece of your behavior, chances are they aren’t making it up. It’s a pattern and you do have a choice.
Saying you don’t have a choice is denial, and not taking steps to outgrow the pattern is not only being lazy, but contrary.
Knowing the genesis of a pattern is not as important as knowing you have a choice. Some people when they find the initial cause of their patterned behavior use it as a justification to keep the behavior alive. “I’m the daughter of a left-handed alcoholic” may be an eye-opening revelation but it does little to outgrow the learned behavior.
Knowing you have a choice is true freedom.
Recognizing a pattern while it’s running is the best time to exercise choice. Recognition is the wedge between stimulus and response. Once the wedge is inserted, you have choices. Whether you take them or not will give you a measurement on how lazy or contrary you are.
Volition removes the glue known as blame and keeps you from being stuck.
Make a choice today!
All the best,
John
http://cdbaby.com/cd/johnmorgan
http://www.cafepress.com/grasshoppernote/3580301
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