Finding Gratitude in Choice

One of the best things that I love about gratitude is that in and of itself, gratitude is a choice. Many can also say that gratitude is also an emotion, and I agree with that sentiment. However, you can wake up every day and choose to be grateful or grumpy. Of course, things can happen throughout our daily lives that can alter our emotions, but when we choose things in gratitude, it can make things much easier for us mentally and emotionally. 

Let’s also not forget that as ever-evolving humans, many of us, especially those in the US, are blessed to have the ability to self-create our lives as we wish. We can choose to evolve, not revolve in life surrounding our choices. Therefore, let’s explore ways to express more gratitude in our choices.

Understanding the cause and effect of our choices

I have learned over the years that every moment of every day, I can choose things that bring me towards my goal or take me away from my goal. Many of us have the power to do this as well. I also know that whatever I choose at that moment, I have the freedom to choose the opposite and even different within the next second, and it’s still all okay to do. It makes me human to know my choices can have an impact, and I can adjust accordingly. Every choice we make has a consequence, and many may negatively look at the word consequence. However, consequence often is assigned a negative connotation, yet it can be both a positive and negative result of our choice. Our minds, experiences, and emotions give the sense of what we deem a “consequence.”

Understanding our world is a sequence of cause and effect that can help you better grasp gratitude in your choices. As humans, once we better understand and balance the cause and effect, we will feel more confident about our choices and express more thankfulness for choosing differently in each moment. For example, I have found that I can balance my life out if it gets demanding or too challenging that I have the ability to do these things as well:

• I have the ability to stop, reflect, and reassess the direction of situations and scenarios going during that time.

• I have the ability to change my ways for the better if I am not getting or seeing the results that I want.

• I have the ability to improve upon things that I desire to achieve better results. Some of these improvements can include delegating tasks appropriately, asking for help when needed, and letting go of things I no longer want to hold onto anymore.

• I have the ability to wake up every day and choose differently than the last.

significant mistakes are little ones accumulated 

For many of us, we tend to focus on the big mistake that happened and not the little ones that piled up that created the big one. Often, it is also hard to want to see the reality that something is just not going in a positive direction as we would wish to. And of course, because we live in a society based primarily on self anymore, it can be hard to see the outside perspective of knowing when we need to cut our losses ahead of time to avoid a coarse collision into a big mistake. 

In some scenarios, we also fail to see the big mistake before it happens when we are more focused on the result or end goal than the steps and path to get there. While we can adapt and evolve, the inner wisdom and tuning into your intuition of seeing something not going the right direction is key to realizing that most big mistakes are many minor ones accumulated together. 

I mainly use the example of my experience in my K2 adventure when it comes to realizing major mistakes are often minor ones compiled up. On that trip, many little things happened on Broad Peak that caused me to reevaluate my summit of K2. Watching these minor issues snowball into more significant issues made me think to myself, “you know what, nope, I am not going to lose my life to summit this mountain.”  

I let my awareness of self and my intuition guide me and lead me to that realization. A realization that ultimately kept me safe when we experienced a tragedy on that trip with the loss of one of my team members and other team member injuries. Since I decided to turn around, that may have saved my life instead of pushing forward because this was turning into a series of unfortunate events, so to speak.

Final Thoughts

I am often grateful that we can make different choices in a split second. Yet, that doesn’t come without the responsibility of living out the actions from those choices. It is also important that we thank ourselves and express gratitude for the ability to choose, adapt, and adjust our lives to evolve, not revolve. None of us is perfect, but the key is to adapt and change from our mistakes while making choices to do better next time.