Mapping out the good and bad in life's choices

Trying to fulfill your purpose in life is a daunting task. For those who don't know what it is, it can create a great deal of turmoil. For those who do know what it is and can't seem to make it happen, it can be equally traumatic. There are often many obstacles, and you have to have both a positive view of yourself, inner strength, as well as determination in order to see a goal through.

One tip, however, in the process is bolstering your own inner dialogue so your thoughts become an asset to you and not a detriment.

Part of this dialogue is always keeping in mind that you have choices.

A choice can be easy or it can be very hard. While you might feel unable to make a choice in your current situation, 99.9 percent of the time a choice is always there.

Choices are often directed by the level of stress in our life, both good and bad. A good stress, eustress, takes the form of that little voice telling you to try something even though it might be a little scary. This happened to me during my senior year of college.

The psychology department was taking applications for Teaching Assistants positions to work with Introductory Psychology classes. Although I thought this would be interesting, the thought of standing up before a classroom and giving lectures was pretty scary. However, the stress that arose from my thinking about this opportunity finally lead me to apply for the position, be accepted, and turned out to be a great experience. While I had a choice: apply or don't apply, a level of stress occurred because that inner voice of mine told me not to turn down this opportunity.

On the flipside, there's also distress, which is the bad form of stress. Take for example a client who had gotten to the point where she couldn't sleep, suffered panic attacks, and was basically anxious all the time because of a situation within her family that she felt she had to resolve. She felt she had no choice but to remain in it and even though she was receiving numerous signals from her body that this wasn't a healthy choice, she continued to do it anyway.

In talking with this client, I brought up the issue of choice. I asked her to look at both sides of the situation and see what her options truly were. Once she delved more deeply into the issue, she found that she had many options available to her, with most alleviating the chronic stress in which she found herself. Doing so opened up a much more healthy level of functioning. She was able to approach the problem from a position where she could take a step back and weigh the costs/benefits not only to herself, but others, rather than remaining "in the trenches" and getting more anxious by the day.

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