The Courage To Choose Yourself

15:58

15:58

The Courage To Choose Yourself

by Anna Thellmann

Rated

5

Type

talks

Activity

Meditation

Suitable for

Everyone

Plays

53

Live Class Recording - You always have a choice — even when it feels like you don’t. This session helps you reclaim your power of choice so you can live aligned with who you truly are — not just who others expect you to be.

Self Motivation Self Honesty Expectation Management Conflict Avoidance Create

Meet your Teacher

Shenyang, Liaoning, China

Meet your Teacher

Shenyang, Liaoning, China

Transcript

The courage to choose yourself. And I want to start with reminding you, I don't know if you know it even, But I want to let you know that we humans, We are self-motivated. And what I mean when I say that is that whatever you do, Whatever you do, Whatever I do, It's motivated for our best interest. Now that doesn't mean that we're happy with what we do or that we choose it. It's subconscious. It's a subconscious decision that whatever you do, You do it for yourself. It's not selfish. Don't get that mixed up. That's just how our brain works. It's survival. Our brain is there to help our body survive. And that's why we do it. Now, Let me give you an example. For example, You have a child. You feed that child. Why do you feed the child? Yes, On the surface, You would say, Yeah, So that it survives. But on the other hand, You also feed it so that you make sure it feels like you have done your responsibility. You had the responsibility to feed that child. Done. So achievement. You also do it because you don't like the consequences of that child starving and dying. You don't want to live with the guilt. You don't want to live with that. So you're feeding the child subconsciously for your survival, Emotional and physically. You do it because you're self-motivated, Because you want to survive. But because it's subconscious, You're not aware of that. You might never heard about this before. I just told you now, But that's what it is. But when we talk about this topic of choosing yourself, What we want to do is we want to choose ourself consciously. So we want to be aware and we want to make it proactively. We want to say, I choose myself. Full stop. And not do it because of the survivor. That's still there. Don't get me wrong. But it gives you the power making the decisions for yourself consciously. Now, Let me give you a couple of examples. Examples when you choose yourself subconsciously, Bear that in mind, But you don't choose yourself consciously. And that might be by staying silent to avoid conflict. Now, If you've been here in my classroom before, You know, Conflict is just a difference in opinions or feelings. And because you interact with another person that had different experiences, Has different beliefs and values, Etc. There is a difference in opinions and feelings occasionally, Sometimes more, Sometimes less. But we use conflict as a bad thing. Even though conflict is just a difference in opinions and feelings. And we all have that with as soon as we interact with another person, That comes to the point where you probably have a conflict because you have a different opinion on things because you feel differently about things. But what we believe is that conflict is escalation and ending in an argument, In a fight. But nevertheless, You stay silent to avoid that fight, That argument. So, I want you to be aware. Subconsciously, Of course, You choose yourself, You choose to be quiet so that the other person might still like you. So that you don't get maybe punished. Yeah, It's all preservation again. Subconsciously, You stay silent to survive. But consciously, You don't make that decision. You stay silent because you don't want to have that argument. Even though it might be a topic that's very dear to you, That's important to you. So, You still choose to be silent. Another example is that you feel powerless in your decisions. I have that very often, Particularly when I start working with my one-on-one clients. There's this sentence that they say, I have no choice. And you might be someone who uses that sentence as well. Then you say, I had no choice. Well, I have no choice then to feed my children. The thing is, You do have a choice. You don't like the consequence of some of the decisions that come with the choice. And that's the difference. If you don't choose to feed your child, It might end up dying. You don't like that consequence. So, It's easier for you to say, I have no choice. I need, I have to, To put that pressure on. You could easily say, I want, I want to feed my child. I want to have it here. But it's like this, I have no choice. Or when they say, Someone's putting a gun on your head say, I had no choice. I had to do it. So, No, Of course you had a choice. You didn't like the consequence of the other decision. Of saying something, They shoot you. Ah, You don't like that. But you always have a choice. That's the point here. You always have a choice. Another example, When you choose yourself subconsciously is when you lie to yourself. And this happened, It's a one-on-one client example that just happened yesterday. And we were supposed to meet today, This morning. And she texted me yesterday saying, Anna, Is it okay for you if we postpone our session tomorrow? I have so much going on and won't be able to make it. I mean, For me, It's always okay. If you, As my client, Want to postpone your session, Fine by me. Your choice. So, I said to her, Of course, Fine by me. My question is, However, What is the reason for that, For you believing that you have no choice? Because there's always some coaching coming from here. I mean, That's what I do. So, Probably two hours later, I got a message from her. I said, Okay, I see, I see. Okay, Let me be honest. I have meetings from 2pm through the whole afternoon and I want to spend the morning by myself without any meetings, Without any appointments. And that's why I'm cancelling our session. So, There you go. Be true to yourself. That brings us to what to do to make those conscious decisions or choices for yourself. You are honest to yourself. Of course, It sounds good and probably other people will agree with you when you say, I have so much going on and I can't make it. It's too much. I'm overwhelmed. Other people will come and say, Yeah, I know that feeling. I know how it is. I totally understand. And we as humans, We feel good when we hear that someone else does understand us. Because it gives us an external validation that what we believe, How we react is agreeable, Is likeable, Is how you do it. But when someone says, You know, I choose myself, I want to be by myself. And that's why I'm cancelling everything else. People say like, What's wrong with you? But it's important. Why would you do that? What would you do? You can relax after. Because many of us don't choose themselves. They don't say, I want to do this. This is what brings me the inner calm, The inner satisfaction. In the sense of, I choose myself to be by myself, To just enjoy myself with whatever I'm doing. Yeah. Whatever she did, She did. Yeah. But she enjoyed it. That's what I told her. Enjoy it. At least whatever you do, If you don't do anything else, Enjoy what you do. And enjoyment means have just like become and don't give it any meaning. Have it neutral. Just go with it. That's my definition of enjoyment. It's like, There's no need to give it the meaning of it's positive, It's negative, Makes me happy, It makes me sad. It's just like, No, It's just, I am here. Then that is enjoyment. So be honest with yourself. You don't need to tell anyone else. I want to spend the time by myself. Don't need that. Be honest to yourself. That's the main thing, Because you're the only person you spend the rest of your life with. So be honest with yourself. And I can tell you from my personal experience, My partner is going, They have a tournament, Rowing tournament in Hong Kong this weekend. And I'm looking forward to being by myself with my dogs and have no meetings, No appointments whatsoever. That I have three days to get dressed, Have a shower or not whatsoever. I love it. Looking forward to it. But I'm honest with myself. If I tell that to people, They like, What? You're not going out, You're not meeting people. This is the time now to do something. Not for me. Be honest with yourself. Another thing you can do to train yourself to make more conscious decision for yourself is to figure out what do you actually want? Many of us have this very long list of things that we don't want. But what do you want? And it's not just I want a partner who's loyal. How does that loyalty look like? Be specific in what you want. Two reasons here. It depends on what methodology you want to go with. Energetically, It's manifestation. It's like I see it clearly. And the universe will provide because I have that picture emotionally, Mentally. The other methodology is for your brain. The NLP side is that now your brain knows what to look for. It has now clear instruction on what loyalty looks like and what loyalty doesn't look like. So, Be precise in what do you want for your own sake, Either to manifest or to give your brain the best direction possible. And the other thing you can do is you become aware that you have a choice. Now, I've been talking about this now for the last 10 minutes or so, That you have a choice at any given moment. You choose to be here. You can choose to leave. But there is power in becoming aware that there is a choice. And there is no such thing as a good or bad decision. We like to say when we have expectations, When we have a choice and we have expectation that going with that choice, Making that decision will give us something that we expect, Something good, Positive, Amazing. But then it turns out it doesn't. And then we say, Oh, I made a bad decision. But the thing is, You don't know what you what happens is that your expectation didn't get fulfilled. And that's always disappointing. So, It's better to have less expectations, Less disappointment. But you have these expectations connected to choices, To decisions. But in the end, Every choice, Every decision is meaningless because you give your life meaning. You give everything you do, You think meaning. That's why your thoughts create your reality. You think it. And when you say it's a bad, I made a bad decision, It's because you want to give it that meaning. But the meaning, The decision itself is meaningless. There is no good, No bad, No positive, No negative. You choose to give it that particular meaning. So, When you feel bad about making a particular decision in the past, Become aware that you only gave it that meaning because probably, I guess here, I don't know, But I guess that your expectations haven't been fulfilled. Maybe your expectations, Maybe your family's, Your friends, Whoever's expectation haven't been fulfilled. So, Now it's the bad choice that you made. But you don't know what would have happened if you would have chosen differently. You don't know. You have an idea, You have an expectation again, You have a vivid imagination and can bring up many scenarios what could have happened, But you will never know. And that's why there is no bad decisions, No bad choices, Because you simply don't know. You only know what happens right now. Even the past. It's a memory. Meaningless. And that's a different topic for a different time. But with that, I'm finishing my lecture for today.