75 ~ Choice: Embracing Sovereignty in Every Decision

This episode focuses on the power of choice in our lives, exploring how our decisions shape our reality and emphasize personal empowerment. Listeners are encouraged to shift their perception of choice, recognizing that even not choosing is, in fact, a choice, and to embrace their agency in every choice.

• The inevitability of choice and its role in personal empowerment 
• Fear as a barrier to decision-making 
• Recognizing that not choosing is still a choice 
• The importance of timing in making decisions 
• The impact of self-love on choice-making 
• Happiness and attitude as choices we can actively make 
• Encouragement to embrace the power of choice in shaping one’s life 

If something has resonated with you today, please leave a review, send us a DM, let us know how it touched you. We'd love to hear from you.

Chapters

• 0:08 The Power of Choice and Self-Love
• 15:31 The Power of Choice in Life

Transcript

Speaker 2: 0:08

Welcome to. Desire is Medicine. We are two very different women living a life led by desire, inviting you into our world. I'm Brenda.

Brenda: 0:17

I'm a devoted practitioner to being my fully expressed true self in my daily life. Motherhood relationships and my business Desire has taken me on quite a ride and every day I practice listening to and following the voice within. I'm a middle school teacher, turned coach and guide of the feminine.

Speaker 2: 0:36

And I'm Catherine, devoted to living my life as the truest and hopefully the highest version of me. I don't have children, I've never been married. I've spent equal parts of my life in corporate as in some down and low shady spaces. I was the epitome of tired and wired and my path led me to explore desire. I'm a coach, guide, energy worker and a forever student, even after decades of inner work.

Brenda: 1:00

We are humble beginners on the mat, still exploring, always curious. We believe that listening to and following the nudge of desire is a deep spiritual practice that helps us grow.

Speaker 2: 1:12

On the Desire as Medicine podcast. We talk to each other, we interview people we know and love about the practice of desire, bringing in a very important piece that is often overlooked being responsible for our desire.

Catherine: 1:32

Welcome back, friends, to another episode of Desire as Medicine podcast. I am here with my lovely co-host, Brenda. I'm excited to talk to you today about something else that is very inevitable, just like fear. Fear is inevitable. It is part of the human experience. And choice is also inevitable. We choose all the time.

Catherine: 1:55

I know in my early times, early stages of personal growth, I used to say well, I don't have a choice, I have to do this. That was a very common phrase for me. I don't have a choice I have to work hard. I don't have a choice I have to study hard. I don't have a choice I have to work all these hours. I don't air quotes, have enough money. I don't have a choice. If I don't do it, who's going to do it? Well, clearly, the martyr had to show up.

Catherine: 2:23

There were all these places where I really believed in my heart of hearts that there was no choice, predominantly because I used to think that if I was choosing and I didn't like the options, well then there was no choice. But that is a complete fallacy. Like. That is not true. Me not liking the choices are an opinion, but there is still a choice, Even if I'm choosing between something I don't like and something I don't like, something I don't approve of, something I don't approve of. I am still choosing, and not choosing is also a choice. But often we think that not choosing or not liking my options mean that there's no choice. But there is. There is always a choice point, and Brenda and I wanted to come on tonight.

Catherine: 3:22

I don't know why I said tonight, because it's daytime, but wanted to come on today and talk about that and remind you that there is always a choice. It's really important to have sovereignty and reclaim our sovereignty there, that we have choice. What comes up for you, Brenda. Thank you for that.

Brenda: 3:41

Catherine, I love this. Not choosing is still a choice, and sometimes we just need to sit with our choices before we're ready to act, and that is choosing in its own way. We're choosing to wait. You can come. You can do that from an empowered point of view. Knowing that you're not ready to choose yet, right, or that you need more time, and you're sitting with your, your, your options is very different than being victimized by it, that you can't make a choice because you don't like the choices, so you can choose to just own it. You could choose how you respond to your choices and just own it.

Brenda: 4:31

I'm not ready yet and that's okay. Like we all have different systems and maybe you have a sacral system and you can make a choice really quickly. I have emotional authority. I need to sit with something, sometimes for a few hours or a few days. Some people need to sit with things for a few weeks I talked about in the last episode. To leave my marriage took me five years. I needed to sit with it to build my capacity, and inside of that is a choice. You're choosing to wait. I think it's a very empowered place to be. You're choosing to wait, and I think it's a very empowered place to be Choosing, knowing that you're not quite ready.

Catherine: 5:13

I think that's a very empowered spot. From what I've seen in myself and in others. This feels. It feels and it has been my experience that this is a hard concept to grasp. I think there's a place in us where maybe we think life is whimsical or we want to live in spontaneity and magic and it's really easy to be fogged and not see the choice point, like not realize where the choice point was. For me, in this particular circumstance, it's a really important practice, yes, and it does require slowing down, like you said. Sometimes it requires us to choose, to wait to make the choice.

Catherine: 6:11

I think it requires some slowing down to choose, to choose Like oh, I'm making the option A and I don't like option B, but I'm going to choose one because I need to be the creator of my life. I need to practice what it feels like to choose when all the choices I'm looking at are not desirable. It's so easy to get stuck in the I just don't want Chinese food. So what do you want? Well, I don't know what I want, I just know I don't want that. That's not helpful, right?

Catherine: 7:00

And it does require sometimes to go through all the no's before we can feel our yes, but it is up to us to know what we want and to bring in that choice point, to have enough wherewithal to be in relationship with ourselves, enough that we're tapped in to the flow of what we want. And I don't think it's so easy. And I'm not saying that after this episode everybody's going to be able to choose. But my goal with this episode is to remind everyone that we're always choosing. Whether we see it or we don't see it, it is actually happening.

Brenda: 7:47

It's really true. I love this idea of owning the power to sit with what's coming up for you, because by not choosing, by not making an immediate choice or decision, you could choose to look at that like you're stuck right, or you could choose to look at that while I'm sitting, with how this all feels. Here's the juice. There's so much to learn inside of that pose. How do you treat yourself inside of that? Are you caring for yourself? Are you being compassionate with yourself? Are you caring for yourself? Are you being compassionate with yourself? Are you forcing a decision? Are you beating yourself up for not choosing, or are you trusting and taking good care of yourself?

Brenda: 8:41

Sometimes part of making a decision isn't like just the masculine act of making a choice.

Brenda: 8:57

It's doing the next right thing, and maybe that has nothing to do with the choice that's in front of you.

Brenda: 9:00

Maybe the next right thing is take a bath, maybe the next right thing is to pay your bills or call a friend or cry or make food, and by following the breadcrumbs of what's true and what the next thing to do is is, it leads you to a new place, which gives you information, which opens up a door that might reveal something that brings you closer to your choice point, and I think this is a very empowered way to live.

Brenda: 9:41

And there sometimes are just times where you need to make a decision, and there sometimes are just times where you need to make a decision, and then there's times where you just don't know what to do or what's next. And this idea of following the breadcrumbs and thinking about what's next Wow, it just opens doors for you. Instead of putting pressure on yourself to make a decision when you're not ready, what if you went at the speed of your body and your system and you took such good care of yourself, you loved yourself enough to stay with yourself and hold that, hold the sensation with your partner or your friends or your family and say, I don't know. That is the ultimate invulnerability, which is the ultimate empower, because you are fully aligned with yourself in that moment, and that opens up doors to possibility.

Catherine: 10:48

I wish we had an example I'm trying to think of an example right now of choice point, but before I do that, you said something that I want to piggyback on. You said well, what if you loved yourself enough to stay with yourself? And I want to remind everyone of the self-love series, where one of the things that we talked about on the self-love series is you don't love yourself enough and then you stay with yourself. You stay with yourself and then that's how you learn to love yourself, like you have to create the action first. Sort of same same what we're talking about with choice point that you have a choice. Whether you make the choice or don't make your choice, you're still choosing. Oh, my goodness. So the thought that's coming up for me is such a bigger conversation, but I'm just going to go with it and see what happens.

Catherine: 11:46

For me, happiness is a choice. I was deep in research about happiness when I was a teenager late teens, let's say, like from 16 to 19. Because I didn't really see a lot of happy people and I was concerned about that because I wanted to have a happy life. And, yes, there are tons of things that come with the choice of I want to be happy and I think there's a lot to be said for I'm not going to let someone steal my joy. Like you're just having a great time going through your day and someone comes in sideways for whatever reason, they're having their sideways day and you get to choose whether or not you're going to be sideways. Like can you choose happiness over and over and over again, because happiness is something that is an inside job. Like it will never be happening outside of you. I don't care what TED talk you went to. I actually had someone ask me this recently, like are you happy? And I thought to myself oh, I recognize that this person's asking me this question.

Catherine: 13:00

In regards to my life and all the different parts, I'm like oh wow, I don't actually feel unhappiness at this point in my life. I feel like shit, tons of peace and pretty much happy most of the time. Like very unbothered by my environment and I don't know which one came first, the chicken or the egg. And when I say which one came first, as in, I don't have that many irritants in my environment, that. So maybe someone could say to me well, that's easy for you to say, you don't have irritants in your environment, or it's easy for me to do because I literally don't have irritants in my environment.

Catherine: 13:52

I have not chosen to have irritants in my environment. My choice is to not have those. My choice is to be at peace and be happy, and there's a cost to this right. I don't have irritants, so I don't have complicated relationships, which means that I don't have potentially very rewarding relationships because that is born out of irritants. Like it's still a choice and for me, based on my own childhood and upbringing, like happiness and peace are big on my list. Like I could not choose those as a child and now, as an adult, oh, they're my number one choice. That is my choice point and if something comes up where I could be really on fire and pissed or not, like I try to not.

Brenda: 14:49

You're reminding me of a great book that I read, pretty popular, a New Earth by Eckhart Tolle, and he talks about this. He talks about choice and I love this example. He says people say they want peace and they're meditating and during their meditation the phone rings and they say, well, I have to answer the phone and answer the phone and they're like I don't have peace. And he says you don't want peace, you want to answer the phone because you have a choice. You have a choice to answer the phone or not. And what are you choosing? I think that is a brilliant example.

Brenda: 15:31

And the other thing besides happiness that you always have a choice point on, which is related but a little different. Maybe happiness is cousin your attitude. I think that you can choose your attitude, how you are in the world. And there is this quote that I just love by Victor Frankl in Man's Search to Meaning. He was a Holocaust prisoner in Auschwitz and he wrote this incredible book and he talked about you could take everything away from me and you can imprison me, but you can awareness to say I'm going to choose still how I want to live my life from this imprisoned place. There's a lot of wisdom in that, especially as a free person walking around this earth with all the privileges and comforts that I have, I still get to choose my happiness and my attitude and I work on that every day to be honest and how I choose to treat myself, how I choose to treat the people around me. These are all choices.

Catherine: 16:56

Yeah, I would rephrase that the phrase of like life happens, life does its lifing thing. Phrase of like life happens, life does its lifing thing and we get to choose how we respond Like our response is our choice to whatever the irritant is that's out there, and I love the irritant example of meditating and the phone is ringing right. I don't remember what episode we did so long ago. It was on being resourced. It had me think of one of the things that influences my peace is that I put my phone down after nine o'clock. I don't want to know about it. I don't want to hear about it. Whoever's dead will be dead in the morning. I'll worry about it then, excuse me.

Catherine: 17:42

There are days where, potentially, I don't hit that marker, but for the most part it's a marker I hit because I just love how it feels to not be concerned with who needs what. It's something I enjoy. It's a choice point. I choose to put the phone down because I don't want to be rubbed in any way by things that occur at that time. If I were to take it even a step further, it's like I don't want to be rubbed at a time of day where I'm a lot less resource. Right, it's the end of my day, I'm sort of at the end of my own rope, I'm going getting ready to wind down. I don't really have the extra resources to be with others, and so I respond in kind by not being available. Not the practice of oh, let me look at my phone. I mean, let me choose to not respond. No, no, no. I don't want the stimulus at all so that I can stay in my location in my peace. And some people could argue and say well, you're not really living, you're not allowing the rub of life to happen. So in that way you're sort of a monk on the mountain, not necessarily a monk in the city. So in that way you're sort of a monk on the mountain, not necessarily a monk in the city, and to that I say I'm okay with that, that's my choice, right, that is how I choose to do it.

Catherine: 19:11

The goal today in this conversation is to remind everyone that you have a choice point. You have a choice point to when your mind is spinning. You decide do I want to spin on this or not? You have the choice point when you want to worry Do you want to spin on this or not. You have the choice point when you want to worry. Do you want to worry about things that are not in your control or not? It's up to you. I have a whole episode on that. Like. These are all places where there are choice points. Whether you're choosing or not choosing, you're choosing. You're choosing to wait Great for you. But the choice is inevitable, just like fear. It is part of the life experience.

Brenda: 19:50

And can we make loving choices for ourselves, tapping into what is true for you in this moment, because every day, our day, is comprised of a series of choices. So I'm even considering right now. Catherine and I have been recording this afternoon having a great time, and I get to choose what's next. I just got a new phone. I really want to set it up, but what I actually really need to do is get some movement after this. So what choice am I going to make? Am I going to make the choice that's really loving and kind to my body, which is going to take a walk and getting some fresh air? That's actually the most true thing. But am I going to listen to that? Or am I going to just like follow the candy and set up my phone? I bet you know what I'm going to choose, and here's why I'm going to choose the walk, because that's what's true. It's going to feel great, I'm going to move my body and then setting up my phone is going to feel so freaking juicy, it's going to be so much fun and I'm going to have the energy to sit with myself to do it because I made the choice that really supports my body and my system, my attitude. It's going to make me feel really good about myself, and then that just opens up the whole domino for the rest of my day. So that's how I choose to live, and it is a choice.

Brenda: 21:15

And the other point I want to just say as we wind this down is sometimes you might be listening and you say I don't have those kinds of options, right, sometimes you don't. Maybe you have some kids at home, or you have to carpool, or you're taking care of an elderly parent, or whatever your situation is. Maybe you can't go and do the thing that you really want to do. Well, you can just throw your hands up and say, well, well, you can just throw your hands up and say, well, can't do that, life sucks. But here's the more empowering question what can you do? What choice can you make? That is the most loving and kind choice forcing through and just checking everything off of our list of what we think we need to do today, that we lose sight of the fact that we actually have a choice and that we very often make choices that make it harder for ourselves. And you can choose to make it easy for yourself, which, in my opinion, makes life so much better. All right, catherine, take us home.

Catherine: 22:33

I don't have that much to add here. I think we've touched on all the places that we wanted to touch. So I will say and remind, just closing thoughts there's always a choice point. Even not choosing a choice, not liking the choices doesn't mean there's no choice. It just means we don't like what we're choosing between. But we still have to make a choice. Choosing to wait is valid. We can choose to wait. How we respond is also a choice. And whenever possible, choose you, because you'll be all the much like, all the better for it. And with that, if something has resonated today, please leave a review, send us a DM, let us know how it touched you. We'd love to hear from you. Bye for now.

Brenda: 23:42

Thank you for joining us on the Desire is Medicine podcast.

Speaker 2: 23:46

Desire invites us to be honest, loving and deeply intimate with ourselves and others. You can find our handles in the show notes. We'd love to hear from you.