The Freedom to Choose

Yesterday, I heard Naomi Judd speak at a Town Hall Meeting. She had quite a story to tell but what struck me was the solution she found for her difficulties.

She said, “It’s not what happens to you but what you choose to do with it.” She paused, so we had a few minutes to digest what she said. She went on to say “we choose our reactions”—“our emotions drive our behavior.” This was so familiar from the various clients I’ve worked with through the years. When a client first starts therapy they don’t realize they have the power to change their thinking. Dr. Albert Ellis’s book Rational Emotive Therapy (RET) was the first time I’d heard this message and finding it worked, I was able to help clients see this was true. Most of us don’t like change—we would rather stay with the familiar. But change is the true nature of the world.

Naomi went on to say it took work and determination to let go of the past and to reach a new perspective on it. “We attract what we think.” Most don’t realize we have a choice--knowing you are choosing to continue with the same old stuff or realizing you have a choice with how you think about something. As you begin to explore what those choices are, other ways of looking at something can begin to happen.

It is important to get help in making these changes so you can attract positive abundance in your life. No one can do this work for you—you are 100% responsible for your choices and your recovery.

Naomi’s story had nothing to do with addiction but it had everything to do with growing up with dysfunction and realizing she didn’t learn the skills she needed to live in abundance or that how she thought about things was actually making her life more challenging. She learned that she was responsible for making the necessary changes with her thinking so she could have the life she wanted.

So, Naomi’s story made me think of the ACOAs that still don’t realize they have the choice to re-write the story of their life--to have a new perspective.

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