The Choice Journals #2: Finding Hidden Choices
Some choices might not feel like choices, but they are.
Some choices might not feel like choices, but they are. Sometimes choices are hidden beneath limiting beliefs, ingrained habits, or the language used to describe them. The way we peceive the availability of choice determines whether we recognise it at all. Not looking for choices is itself, a choice.
- Quoted from The Choice Journals #1, an introduction to this series.
Language is the operating system of the mind.
The words you speak to yourself are also the ones you listen to, because you are both the speaker and the listener. Buried inside those words are your choices, subtly arranged as if they are facts, not just in what you say but in how you say it, which can dictate how much agency you grant yourself.
Some say you don’t have to believe your thoughts. That might help at times, but there is a more proactive approach to consider: become a more informed speaker. Speak with clarity, listen with discernment, and choose which ways of thinking serve you better than others.
If we are always choosing, then an opportunity for choice must exist in every moment, even when thinking about thoughts. This metacognition helps uncover our choices, examine them, and, if necessary, shift them, even slightly, toward something that serves us better.
Choice is one of the most powerful forces at your disposal. To choose is to shape how you are. You can change your life significantly by recognising your choices, and by choosing differently.
Some choices are obvious, and others are camouflaged in language. The most subtle of all choices sneak through in hidden thinking habits, encrypted and undetected, simply by not being made clear. Phrasing may suggest inevitability, powerlessness, or permanence. Unexamined language leads to unexamined choices, and unexamined choices maintain unchanged outcomes.
To find a choice, a choice element may be cast into a sentence like a net, as if to catch an unseen choice in motion, or even to craft one out of a situation.
A simple starting point would be to tie ‘choosing’ or ‘choice’ words into a doing or being phrase.
“I’m reading this article” becomes “I am choosing to read this article.”
“I’m going for a walk” becomes “I have chosen to go for a walk.”
“I’m angry” becomes “I choose to respond with anger.”
Language is a lens. Adjust the lens and the picture changes.
Perceptions and beliefs are choices in disguise.
A funeral director understands choice language well. As orators, their language can lift the emotional states of a grieving room.
“We are saddened by their death, but we choose to celebrate their life.”
A single shift in phrasing turns grief and devastation into gratitude and reflection.
They cannot change the reality of death, but their words can change how death is held in the hearts of those left behind. They remind you of your choices. That your loved one still lives through the warmth of your memories, in the kindness you share with others, and in the impact they had on your life, which continues to ripple outwards to all those around you.
Powerful language, and profound sentiments. And yet, this is the same event with the same loss. Choice cannot bring someone back to life, but it can change how you carry them for the rest of yours.
The same applies to how you carry yourself through life. If words can reframe death, then they can certainly reframe struggles, ‘failure’, and even self-perception.
“I have to go to work” becomes “I am choosing to go to work because I value my income more than the alternative.”
“I always fail” becomes “I choose to focus on what I haven’t mastered yet. I choose to focus on my shortcomings rather than my steady progress.”
“The world is a terrible place” might become “I choose to focus on negativity when I could choose more empowering perspectives.”
“I’m always depressed” could mean “I choose to frame struggle as something that happens to me rather than something I can influence.”
Nothing here denies hardship. This is not forced optimism or denial. It is the recognition that suffering is not just in events, but in how we hold them.
Rephrasing statements in choice-based language shifts your locus of control inward. External forces and limiting beliefs lose some of their power, placing it back into your hands.
You don’t have to have all the solutions yet, you just have to know that you are making choices. At least then, you begin to own problems rather than surrender to them.
Mastering choice has to involve radical honesty.
To refine choices, they must first be seen. But you must also be willing to tell yourself the truth about them. And truth requires choosing honesty because honesty shall set you free.
“I’ll do it tomorrow” becomes “I am choosing to procrastinate. I am choosing to struggle more tomorrow than I need to now.”
“I don’t have time” becomes “I am choosing not to prioritise this. I choose circumstance before I choose myself.”
“This is just the way I am” becomes “I am choosing not to change.”
“I can’t leave this bad relationship” might translate to “I am choosing to stay in this relationship because I fear the unknown more than I fear the problems I have here.”
“I always attract toxic people” might be “I choose harmful dynamics because they feel familiar.”
If these statements hurt, good. The truth often does. Nothing can be fixed while it stays hidden in self-deception.
Own every choice, even the ones that hurt to admit you’ve made. The ones that challenge your self-image and unravel the stories you’ve had to keep telling yourself. Especially those, because while you were clinging to another narrative, they’ve been hiding in plain sight, writing the real story.
By injecting choice and applying honesty, you own it. By owning it, you can change it.
The more you look, the more you’ll find.
Choices can be buried in habit, culture, upbringing, or emotion. They are hiding everywhere. Many of the choices I made in the past didn’t feel like choices at all. They felt automatic or inevitable. I inherited many of my choices from my upbringing, oblivious that they were, in fact, choices. The person I believed myself to be was actually a collection of unexamined choices I made on repeat. If they were choices, they could be examined and changed. And in changing them, I changed myself.
I chose to be at war, now I choose my battles. I chose anger, now I choose patience in spite of it. I chose to argue, now I choose to disengage with strategy. I chose to resent, now I choose to unburden myself. I chose to blame, now I choose ownership of what I do next. I chose avoidance, now I choose courage. I chose the toxic familiar, now I choose the discomfort of growth. I chose to be led by impulse, now I choose to lead with principle. I chose a narrative of unfairness, now I choose to tear it apart and build my own story. I chose to replay the past, now I choose to write the future. I chose to be blocked by obstacles, now I choose to bulldoze through them. I chose unnecessary suffering and numbed myself to it, now I choose health, power, and freedom through discipline. I chose to be somebody I wasn’t, now I choose exactly how I wish to be.
I chose to escape, now I choose wisdom.
I choose choice.
By using choice language, you create a moment of agency. And sometimes, that pocket in time might be all you need to adjust something, no matter how small. Train yourself to see choices in your phrasing, and you’ll start spotting them everywhere.
Language is how you build your world, not just how you describe it.
Don’t try to ignore or suppress your thoughts. You are both the speaker and the listener, and neither can be switched off. But you can empower your inner voice and your perception.
Capture your thoughts in motion. Regard them with curiosity. Interrogate them. Find the choice. Expose it, examine it, and choose better. Choose to become a more informed thinker.
Choice is embedded in language.
To refine your words is to refine your world.
To be continued…
Thank You.
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The Choice Journals #1: Mechanics of Choice
I chose to read this twice so I could change my operating system just a little bit!
I’ve always instinctively known that thinking about certain things is like opening a door, and more of the same thoughts will leak through later. The choice to focus on how terrible everything is, is so mainstream and unproductive, and spreads from person to person.
And today, I choose to see it as a challenge that has been given to us to overcome and grow stronger from.
Another powerful one. Been thinking so much about language lately. Thanks Adam. 👏