“Choice, not chance, determines our destiny.” JEAN NIDETCH

The ideas, tools and techniques we’ve discussed in this book can together give us the autonomy and the power to choose our lives and our experience of life.

Having the power to choose, or the power of ‘self-determination’, means no longer seeing ourselves as victims of our circumstances or of other people’s actions. Thoughts such as ‘they did it to me’ or ‘life did it to me’ leave us with a sense of injustice and powerlessness.

Whether we’re bemoaning our ill health or fuming over other people’s unreasonableness or incompetence, victim thinking takes away our power and leaves us feeling not in control of our lives.

All dissatisfaction involves, to some extent, a sense of frustration or powerlessness. When whatever has happened doesn’t match our expectations or preferences, we may feel frustrated or powerless if we can’t immediately do something about it, or if we couldn’t prevent it.

We may not experience it as frustration or powerlessness. We may experience it as anger, fear, stress, depression, anxiety, jealousy, worry or regret. But frustration or powerlessness is usually at the root of all of these.

This book is all about taking responsibility for our lives and gaining a greater sense of our power. This isn’t the sort of power we might use against others or to control others. It’s the power to determine how we experience life and get what we want out of it. But it’s up to us to claim that power. Nobody else can do it for us. Others can help. But the responsibility lies with us.

There are hundreds of stories of people who’ve experienced dramatic changes in their lives by making similar choices.

We don’t need to be desperate or make dramatic changes in order to develop more productive attitudes. Earlier I suggested trying out the ideas of each chapter for at least a day or two before moving on to the next. If you’ve done this, your life should already have begun to change. If you chose to read the whole book first, you may still like to carry out this exercise, one chapter at a time. It should only take a month or two of practise for your life to have changed significantly.

At the end of this book, there are some more examples of ways of thinking about situations and challenges using these tools.

There’s also an overall summary that you can copy and keep somewhere convenient for regular reference. You can refer to it periodically while thinking about any difficulties you may have encountered. It’s helpful to review it at the end of each day and think about how it relates to your current or recent experiences and whether you’ve been using the tools.

The summary has been reordered to reflect, for example, that the first tool you might expect to use in a challenging situation is owning your reaction and accepting your feelings.

If there are any particular habits or patterns you want to change, make a list of these, or include them in your goals list, writing down the more positive attitudes or behaviour you’d like to adopt. Referring to the list periodically, while you look back on your recent actions, can help you absorb the ideas into your way of thinking.

AN AMAZING LIFE

It may well have been better if the past or the present had been different, but it couldn’t have been different. To me this is sufficient reason to see the past and present as perfect just the way it was and is.

People often ask me if I could live my life again, would I change anything? Despite the struggles of my earlier life, despite the mistakes I’ve made, despite the losses and missed opportunities, I always answer truthfully that I wouldn’t change a thing.

It’s my life. Nothing could have been different. To want anything to have been different is to want to be someone else.

Whatever difficulties you’ve experienced and may be experiencing, perhaps you can see your life, both past and present, as perfect too.

The future is wide open. The future is whatever we want to make it. The future will not only be perfect, it can be amazing too if we choose to make it so.

BE TOUGH WITH YOURSELF AND GO EASY ON YOURSELF

You now have the tools to start leading an amazing life. Make sure you use them. To change old habits, it may be necessary to be tough with yourself. Decide right now that you’re never again going to maintain any thought that involves wishing something were already different.

If you find yourself thinking this way, refuse to maintain the thought. Excise it from your mind while you refocus on whatever action you can and want to take to improve the future. Do the same if you find yourself worrying about the future.

Then do the same with every way of thinking and behaving that we’ve discussed. They’re listed in the summary at the end of this book.

You won’t succeed all the time, at least initially. Go easy on yourself. Even when you don’t succeed you were doing your best (the only thing you could have done) with the awareness you had at the time. Change your awareness by committing to succeed next time.

START NOW

When we start taking full responsibility for our lives, we experience a greater sense of freedom and well-being. We can begin to see the world we live in as an abundant arena in which to explore our potential, whatever it may be.

We can see that who we really are – the part of us that observes, chooses and experiences – can come to no harm. Whatever may happen, as long as we’re still alive, that part of us will always be able to choose how we experience life.

We can be more adventurous with our lives, explore more possibilities, be more responsive to opportunities and take more risks.

We can eliminate worry from our lives, without being any less caring or concerned. We can see there really aren’t any problems to worry about; there are only people to care about, issues to think about or be concerned about, feelings to be accepted and worked through, and actions to be taken to the best of our ability. When we realise we’ll always be able to choose our experience by accepting what is, we no longer need to be anxious about the future.

We can look at the difficulties and obstacles that life puts in our path as challenges through which we can grow. Without challenges, we’d simply stagnate. So we don’t have to see them in a negative light. We can just paccept them as we do our best to deal with them.

We can drop our attachment to things having to be a certain way in order for us to be happy. We can choose to be more successful, wealthier or whatever else we want to be, as far as we’re able to, and enjoy the benefits these things bring. But at the same time we can see we don’t need these things to be happy.

Instead of needing possessions, status, abilities, success and so on in order to be able to do the things we think will bring us happiness, we can see that happiness is a state of mind that comes from healthy attitudes. When we’ve achieved that state of mind, we can more easily do the things we want to do and have the things we want to have.

We can be more adaptable, acknowledging that we live in an uncertain world, yet knowing we can deal with the consequences of that uncertainty as they arise. With or without healthy attitudes, life still has its ups and downs. But developing positive and productive attitudes raises the peaks, levels out the dips and makes the whole journey more enjoyable.

And while we’re enjoying our own lives to the full, we can contribute freely to others and to the world we live in, in whatever ways we want to and are able to.

The promise of this book is that the pacceptance principle is a powerful tool for achieving greater happiness, satisfaction, success and fulfilment in our lives. But unless, or until, pacceptance and action are our automatic ways of thinking, we can only think in these ways if we choose to.

Choice, a simple six-letter word that reflects the power and the freedom of being human. Whatever our circumstances, we can choose to paccept what is, in our environment, in ourselves and in others, and we can choose to act in ways that will bring benefits to all. Through these choices we can take responsibility for our actions and our experience of life and claim our right to lead happy and fulfilling lives.

What more do we need than the knowledge that we have, and always will have, the freedom and the power to choose?

The summary overleaf has been arranged on facing pages for ease of copying.

I suggest you make a copy and keep it somewhere convenient for ease of reference.

As with the previous chapter summaries, you may wish to check through it at the end of each day, for a while, to see how much you’ve been using the tools and techniques.

As well as day-to-day events, check you’re applying it to any thoughts about the past and future.