You Have Options
No matter the circumstances, you get to choose
Have you ever felt stuck? You’re in a difficult situation and you just can’t see a way out. It’s a common scenario during coaching sessions. The client has been stuck in their current circumstances for so long, or feel so defeated, that they have lost the hope or creativity to see a way out.
In reality, we’re never without options. We always get to make a choice. That can be difficult for some of us to hear. We can only see the walls closing in and think there literally is no way to overcome what we’re experiencing.
If you’re feeling boxed in and just can’t see a way out, or working with someone who is, there is an exercise I learned at the Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching that you can use to help you get over being stuck. It’s called Five Choices. Here’s how it works:
Describe your situation. Get detailed. What are you experiencing? What have you tried? What are you feeling?
You have 5 choices. You can:
Suffer, be a victim to the situation.
Avoid the situation.
Change the situation.
Alter your experience of the situation.
Accept the situation.
Which choice represents how you’re currently responding?
Which choice represents how you would like to respond?
Describe how you’ll feel when you respond to the situation differently.
What is your plan for responding in the new way?
Even in the most difficult circumstances, you have options. You can choose how you will respond. As you move from choice 1 to choice 5, you’ll notice that they increasingly provide more empowering opportunities.
It’s okay to stay a victim, but if you no longer want to suffer, that option won’t work for you.
You can avoid the situation, but is that feasible and what could it cost you?
Changing the situation may require stepping outside your comfort zone. But it could get you out of your current circumstances.
Altering your experience of the situation requires shifting your perspective. As Wayne Dryer once wisely observed, “If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” The circumstances may not change, but your experience of it will.
Accepting the situation can be difficult, but acceptance, instead of resistance, can actually help you grow as a conscious leader.
The Five Choices exercise is powerful. It helps us realize that we really do have choice, even when circumstances seem unfair or intractable. This reminds me of Viktor Frankl, a Jewish-Austrian psychiatrist and holocaust survivor. He experienced unimaginable, inescapable suffering. But he understood a powerful concept:
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.”
No matter what you’re experiencing, you have options. You have at least 5 choices. Which one will you choose?
Work happy. Live happy. BE happy.
Meredith
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The way we work and build teams is rapidly changing. Leaders often feel unprepared to navigate the transition. As a conscious leadership coach, consultant, and communicator, Meredith helps leaders and their teams create new ways of working and relating so they can prepare for the future by consciously co-creating it.
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