This Compares to the Discovery of Fire!

She is one of the most courageous people I know personally.
I feel privileged whenever we take time to chat.

Crippled by a medical intervention…
Which then created a bigger, life-shattering problem.
Her whole body racked with arthritis at a ridiculously young age.

I find myself holding my breath when she rises slowly, painfully from a chair… and starts to walk.

She has taught me, once again, that there are discoveries that light up our lives and set our souls on fire.

In this case…
It’s the power to CHOOSE.

She chooses not to be embittered.
She chooses to smile, to joke and to laugh.

She spreads before me the combustible, explosive power of CHOICE.

She teaches me…

Yes, people can hurt me,
Really wound with unkindness.
But I can choose. Can’t I?

Choose to carry the terrible burden of a grudge or resentment.
Or to forgive.
And so, to feel freed, lightened, alive.

More specifically, in business:

• I really can choose not to take on the crushing burden of trying to serve more and more and more clients. Merely because revenue growth is, apparently, what we “Have to Do to Be Happy.”
• I really can choose to change a deadline (which I invented) and so stop that deadline bringing me to my knees.
• I really can choose to let go of a client or team relationship which drains, dismays and disappointments.
• I really can choose to stop the relentless, consuming pursuit of more and bigger and better possessions (to justify all the extra time demanded by the insatiable appetite of Business Success)
• I really can choose what “Success” looks like: for me and those I love. And not let others paint the picture for me.
• I really can choose to say “Enough!” on Friday morning; and close the office for the start of an early weekend.

Oh! how I wish I had realised many years ago…
that life doesn’t need to be as complicated, as cluttered, as hard as we often make it.

I encourage you not to wait as long as I did to learn this liberating learning!

Now, I don’t seek to minimise the truth that every life, every relationship, every business is laden with frustrations, disappointments, hurts and heartaches.

Or that there are demands on us to provide for and protect those we love.

That’s life.
Even in our luxurious, privileged First World culture.

What I do seek to illuminate is this wondrous gift that quenches tired minds, exhausted bodies and parched spirits.

This gift we can keep discovering.
This gift called CHOICE.

The power to choose what I do.
Right now.
In this very moment.

The power to live.
And not be lived.

Rediscovering this in recent weeks has taken my breath away.

I do feel that – for the second time – I’ve discovered fire!