How Do I Stay Open to Possibilities?

How often do you decide what the outcome of something will be and because of that, you no longer stay open to other possibilities?

You may not even be aware of this because you don’t see that on the periphery other things that may be there.

As famous the quote says, "When all we have is a hammer, every problem becomes a nail." So what do we have to do to keep ourselves open and mindful to keep choosing?

If we start to see ourselves as unfixed in an existential way as opposed to fixed, concrete objects, we can be open to the possibility of becoming other things instead of having fixed labels and role types and deciding how we are. A classic example of a fixed role in our society is buying into the idea that you are either an "introvert" or an "extrovert."

We can put that aside and constantly ask:nn * "Where am I limiting myself?"n * "What is my part in creating this?"n * "Can I create something different?"n * "What is right about this I’m not getting?"

I remember a video I saw of a young boy in Sydney, Australia who helped individuals on the streets try to make new lives and to get employment. He was a young man of seventeen and born into a family where both parents were alcoholics and drug addicts. He was being interviewed because he worked as a very young teenager for Mission Australia.

One of the questions they asked him was, "How, with such difficult circumstances, did you end up not saying ‘Well it’s not my fault I had this sort of upbringing. What sort of choices do I have?’"

He turned around in that video and he said, "It wasn’t about realizing that I had a choice. Throughout all of my difficult upbringing, my parents were often comatose and not available to me. They didn’t care correctly or appropriately for my needs as a young child. There was a next door neighbor and she was very kind to me and she showed me that there could be a different reality. As a young man, I realized I had a choice. Once that had been brought into my awareness, I realized that by saying ‘it’s not my fault, these are simply my circumstances,’ I was lying to myself."

Most people have encountered others who introduce themselves with a story about them being a survivor of childhood abuse. What does it say about their universe? Their need is so strong that they feel the impulse to tell everybody, "Oh by the way, I am a survivor of childhood abuse"?

We are all survivors of many things, but the point is that we don’t need to bind that story so closely to our identity that we cut off all other possibility.

This brings us to the identity myth. Who are we? What are we made of? What are the stories that we make up about ourselves?

People often describe themselves in terms of a job titles, familiar environments and cultures. These are stories and they take away our freedom to choose.

It is important to be constantly asking ourselves:nn* "What story am I telling myself about who I am?"n* "What’s my trauma?"n* "Where do I come from?"n* "What am I hiding behind that keeps me from feeling robust in the world?"n* "If I change my story, will it change my whole life?"n* "What could be a different way of being?"

People often look around for a sense of confirmation that they are making the right decisions. They look around to their society by asking questions like, "Am I at the right place where I should be at this age?"

There can be anxiety or discomfort when we do something out of the norm, but when we dare to think of something else and when there are no assurances around us, the one existential reality is uncertainty. By understanding this, we have the power to choose to be anything. n