Whether you are choosing the lesser of the two evils or the greater of the two goods, whether you are choosing to reduce pain or choosing to amplify pleasure, or just choosing not to choose in order to maintain the comfort of the status quo, a choice is always made in the direction of one’s wellbeing.

Indeed, a choice is an act of selection between two or more options.  But what guides this selection?  What informs any given preference?  Wellbeing, of course.  So, congratulations to you on any conscious choice you make since any conscious choice is an affirmation of wellbeing!

Life is in the business of wellbeing.  Celebrate life with conscious choice!

[reference: Choice Awareness Training (for clinicians)]

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We are all equally endowed with willpower but we differ in the power of habits that we have ourselves created and have now to struggle with.  We also differ in terms of the skillpower*  that we bring to the fight with the habitpower.

*skillpower: coping power (which is a reflection of our mastery of such coping strategies as craving control and emotional self-regulation)

related: Weak Willpower or Habitual Automaticity?

Adapted from Choice Awareness Training: Logotherapy & Mindfulness for Treatment of Addictions:

The act of will, application of willpower, and making of a choice are synonymous.  The term willpower, however, has an unfortunate connotation of varying strength, as if to convey that some people have a more powerful will than others.  It should be noted that the term “willpower” is not an inherently incorrect term.  When used in the sense of “power of will (or volition),” the term heightens, if not extols, the human capacity to make a choice.

The phrase “power of will” is free from any kind of interpersonal comparison, it is merely an acknowledgement that as humans we possess a power (a freedom) of self-determination through choice.  The term “willpower” becomes problematic, however, when the semantic focus shifts from “power of will” to “how powerful one’s will is.”

The Concise American Heritage Dictionary (1987) reflects this distinction by defining “will power” as:

1. the ability to carry out one’s decisions, wishes, or plans, and
2. the strength of mind.

While the first meaning of willpower does exist, the second is nothing but a linguistic connotation of the word “power” that does not have a phenomenological reality.  Comparative perception of will or capacity for choice as being stronger or weaker is erroneous and psychologically damaging.  An act of will or a choice is a binary event: one either acts or does not act in a certain fashion.  Consequently, all people are equally strong choosers, with an equal power for will, i.e. of the same willpower.

See the dog chasing its tail?

That’s easy.

That’s still easy.

You chasing your own “I.”

Related Resources:

Choice Awareness Training exercises (continued)

Choice Awareness Training is designed to leverage a greater sense of freedom-to-change, to awaken the living zombie, to facilitate change-process (see a more detailed description of Choice Awareness Training in Make a Choice When It Doesn’t Matter and Open Your Hand to Open Your Mind and Circle of Choice).

Exercise: Enso – Choice Awareness Calligraphy

(if new to this post-series, check Circle of Choice first)

Jung wrote: “It is not that something different is seen, but that one sees differently” (1958, p. 546).  Enso is “zen” for “moon circle.”  The moon circle, in Zen Buddhism, is a symbol of enlightenment and is a frequent subject of calligraphy (Austin, 2001). 

Choice Awareness Training exercises (continued)

Choice Awareness Training is designed to leverage a greater sense of freedom-to-change, to awaken the living zombie, to facilitate change-process (see a more detailed description of Choice Awareness Training in Make a Choice When It Doesn’t Matter and Open Your Hand to Open Your Mind and Circle of Choice).

The Circle of Choice – Practice Version

(if you are new to this discussion, see Circle of Choice first)

Draw at least one mindful circle every day.  Slow down enough to consciously take in all the options available to you at the moment:  the hand you’ll draw it with, the placement of the drawing on the page, the starting point, the direction, the diameter, whether you will bring the ends of the line together or not.   Use this exercise as an alarm clock for your mind.  Time this exercise strategically, before the events in your daily life that are fraught with compulsive mindlessness. 

Choice Awareness Training exercises (continued)

Choice Awareness Training is designed to leverage a greater sense of freedom-to-change, to awaken the living zombie, to facilitate change-process (see a more detailed description of Choice Awareness Training in Make a Choice When It Doesn’t Matter and Open Your Hand to Open Your Mind).

Pattern Interruption: Waking Up the Zombie

George Gurdjieff, an early 20th century Greek-Armenian mystic, the pioneer of the so-called Fourth Way, prescribed pattern interruption activities (such as the use of non-dominant hands to perform various routine tasks of daily living) to wake up the human spontaneity from its slumber.  Pattern interruption is one of the elements of choice-awareness training. 

Choice Awareness Training exercises (continued)

Choice Awareness Training is designed to leverage a greater sense of freedom-to-change, to awaken the living zombie, to facilitate change-process (see a more detailed description of Choice Awareness Training in Make a Choice When It Doesn’t Matter or below).

Choice Awareness Exercise: Open Your Hand to Open Your Mind

Clench your fist, open it.

Clench it again, open it again.

Clench it one more time, open it one more time.

See the mindlessness and sameness of the pattern?

Now…

In the next several posts I’d like to share with you a few Choice Awareness Training exercises that I’ve been using with my clients  since 1999.   Choice Awareness training is designed to leverage a greater sense of freedom-to-change, to awaken the living zombie, to facilitate change-process.

Choice Awareness Training

Freedom manifests through the awareness of a choice.  But what is a choice?  We say we “have a choice” when we are aware of options to select from.  Thus, the notion of “choice” refers to:

a)      the awareness of the options available, and

b)      the act of selection of one of the options.

Becoming aware of the options restores our sense of freedom, takes us off the auto-pilot, off the zombie mode, and gives us an opportunity to change our patterns, habits, rituals, routines.