Choices

It is our choices...that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.
J. K. Rowling

What choices are you making in your life? What abilities are you demonstrating. What is the real reason that you are in the life situation that you currently find yourself in? To consciously answer those questions will take some thought. The biggest impediment to success is all those choices and abilities you don't even know about. Habits are very useful in their right place, but when we get to making choices we aren't even aware of having made, then we get into trouble.

Sometimes we make choices that are just to please someone else. We do whatever we think will make the other person happy, even if it does not support our own goals, or abilities. Sometimes we choose to do something just because that's the way it's always been done, failing to show any ambition or inititative to acheive a better life. Sometimes we make choices because we think we think there is a rule (spoken or unspoken) that we have to follow (for example if someone gives me a blue book and Joe a yellow book, I feel I have to have the blue book even though I'd prefer yellow (and Joe might prefer blue too), because that's what was given to me). None of these are conscious, authentic choices.

It is even our own choice whether to express our abilities. It is a choice we make to discover what abilities we have. It is not useful to us to have abilities we don't even know we have, or to use them in a way that does not benefit our own growth and development. When we make a conscious authentic choice to expresss our abilities in a positive constructive manner working towards our own goals, that says a lot about us. It says we are competent, and we know it, to make things happen. And that we care very much about our goals. And those are really the two main incredients for success.