You Are Your Choices

A little over a year ago my mother, thinking I was the most indecisive person she had ever met, bought me this book from Anthropologie. It sounds like a serious self help book when in fact, it is actually very beautiful, lighthearted, and is filled with lovely quotes from brilliant writers and philosophers. I started to read it a long time ago and was not at a place in my life where I could apply it. I am the person who reads three or four books at a time because my moods change so often, so I forgot about the book and never finished it.

I wrote recently about The Invitation by Oriah. After reading only the first few chapters I had to put it down. It was too dramatic and way too new age for me. She wrote about meditating and calling up Grandmother Earth and what not...weird! So I put that book down, for good, and in my hunger for something uplifting to read I remembered You Are Your Choices. Isn't it amazing how we can be drawn to something that is exactly what we need at that point in time? If I had finished the book a year ago I never would have picked it up this week.

I am making this so much longer than it needs to be... but this book is so wonderful right now. As one of the many victims of this horrible economy I have been telling myself that this is what is for the best, everything happens for a reason, yada yada, but I wasn't actually believing any of it. I've been holding on to these bitter thoughts without even realizing it. So, naturally, this beautiful uplifting book is just what I have needed lately.

Each page is loaded with beautiful uplifting insight and quotations and I am probably going to share a lot of them with you as I read through this book because they inspire me. So today I am going to leave you with this quote by the author:

The smallest shift in our minds can cause a momentous insight. The smallest kindness at a dark time can light up a life. It's important to know that a smile helps someone who is grieving. The same power holds true for an unkindness that can cause someone a great deal of pain. Nothing is little. Everything has great and lasting significance for better or for worse. We should never underestimate the power of music to uplift our spirit. We can read a brief powerful poem that can change our life.

Krishnamurti wisely instructs us, "You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at skies, that is why you must sing, and dance, and write poems, and suffer, and understand, for all that is life." Everything affects our soul. There is great value in whatever happens. - Alexandra Stoddard