The essence of being human is being able to direct your own life. Human act but animals and robots react! Human make choices based on their values. This power of choice means that we are not merely a product of our genes; not a product of how other people treat us. Both of them influence us, but they do not determine us. Human are self-determining thru our choices.
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space, lies our freedom and power to choose our response. In those choices lie our growth and our happiness.”
With many who have grown up with unconditional love in supportive circumstances, the space may be very large. With others, due to various genetic and environmental influences, it may be very small. However the key point is there is a space, and the use of that space and the opportunity to enlarge it exist!
The maverick psychiatrist R.D Laing captured in the words below how failing to notice that we have this space kills our ability to change. Human alone have self-awareness.
“The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice, there is little we can do to change until we notice how failing to notice shapes out thoughts and deeds.”
No matter what has happened, is now happening or will happen, there is a space between those things and our responses to them.
-adapted from The 8th Habit, under subtitle
Our First Birth Gift: The Freedom to Choose.
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