Take Charge of Your Life With The Power of Choice | Dad University

0:00 sometimes the most powerful concepts in the world things that will change the way that we live or change the way that we think sometimes these things are really simple to understand so why don't we implement them into our lives well most of the time it's because we think that it's difficult to do what i'd like to talk to you about today is the power of choice if you're not familiar with it then i feel lucky and privileged to be

0:26 able to introduce it to you if you are familiar with it then you know how it can improve the quality of your life your relationships your career or anything else that is important to you in this video i'm going to discuss three areas of our lives in which we have the power of choice but we rarely use it i know this isn't the normal new dad video but this stuff is important [Music] hey guys i'm jason kreidman and welcome

0:55 to another episode of dad university be sure to give this video a thumbs up subscribe to the channel and click on that notification bell also it really helps us spread our message when you share these videos so maybe you know a couple people that might enjoy this please share it with them the first area where you have the power of choice is choosing your emotions sometimes it doesn't feel like that i mean you're faced with a

1:20 situation or something happens it doesn't feel like you're making a choice you know somebody yells at you without even thinking you may just yell back or what about happiness if emotions were a choice don't you think we would all choose happiness all the time let me give you an example your wife does something that you disagree with it was something bad but instead of getting angry you decided to get happy what would happen so something profound

1:52 happens all the time and this happens with our children and it happens with ourselves is that we blame another person for our emotions so what will often come out of the voice of a parent or even the child will say you made me mad but the truth is we didn't make you mad you made the decision and the choice to get mad do you see how this is a choice you disagreed with something or didn't like

2:21 it and as a result chose to be upset you didn't have to be upset but you chose to be upset you can be in total control of your emotions because it is a choice think of an enlightened person like gandhi or saad guru somebody could yell at them they're not yelling back they have complete control over their emotion they choose calm they choose peace and as a result of that it doesn't matter

2:51 how somebody is acting now imagine us teaching that to our children that no matter what somebody says no matter what somebody does they get to choose their emotion and they can choose to be happy so it doesn't matter what somebody says it doesn't matter what somebody does they are choosing to be who they are and what they want to be and what their emotions are they can choose to be happy we're not making judgment on the emotion

3:19 you have the right to feel however it is that you want but when you begin to realize that that emotion is under your control and that you choose it and you practice you have so much control that you can be calm and peaceful when you want to i can tell you firsthand that i have practiced this over the last couple of years and there have been situations with my wife and with my children that in the past

3:46 there would be no question that i would have gotten upset raised my voice and yelled and i would have been angry however after practicing this i will literally talk to myself in these situations and say is this worth getting angry over what's the outcome if i'm going to get angry is there any benefit to me being angry in this situation and i can tell you it has improved the quality of my life

4:16 so much in realizing that i have a choice of my emotions i get to choose how i want to respond and i don't want to be angry i want to be happy and enjoy myself connected to choosing your emotions is the second area where you have the power of choice this is pretty significant and that is that we choose the meaning of things let's go back to that situation where your wife made a bad decision or got you upset because

4:49 it was something that you disagreed with now yes you choose your emotion but you also chose the meaning of that situation whatever it was that happened you had a certain meaning that you associated with it now somebody else they wouldn't have gotten upset you know it didn't mean that much to them that they wouldn't even think about it but for you because you have that certain specific meaning about it you got upset the meaning we assign to things

5:20 determines everything two different people can assign two different meanings to the same thing one is not right one is not wrong and we assign meaning based on our past experiences based on our knowledge about it it's the lens of which we look through and so we assign this meaning based on our lens this goes into all areas of your life you can take things people situations all of it we assign meaning to

5:52 everything and the reason we're talking about this is because when you realize that you have this power of choice you start making decisions that are going to improve your life your family's life it just overall will improve the quality of your life and you have that opportunity you can choose that family is important you can choose that your wife deserves your love and respect you can choose that your child is an amazing blessing these are all choices we get the ability to choose

6:25 the meaning of things and when you realize that it is powerful you also get to choose whether you want to be a good person or a bad person and this brings us to the third area where we have the power of choice you get to choose your destiny so what does that mean well you get to choose what kind of person you want to be you get to choose what you want to do with your life

6:51 all of these are part of your destiny and again you have the choice this is where it gets hard and real when you acknowledge that you have choices in your destiny then you have to take responsibility for your current situation and your future do you want to be healthy how much do you want to educate yourself what's what's your career going to be these are all choices that you have about your destiny

7:22 but we have a tendency to blame other people and blame the world and blame everything else going on everybody else is responsible for my pain but when you when you understand that you have a choice in your destiny you take responsibility for it and then realize that you have the power to change it now i understand everyone has different circumstances comes from different backgrounds different environments even different levels of privilege but we all still have the ability to choose our

7:54 emotions choose the meaning of something and choose our destiny we all have that and nobody can take that away from us so the next time that your child does something that usually gets under your skin can you choose to remain calm and happy if you're having a disagreement with somebody can you just agree to disagree and realize that you've assigned different meanings to the same thing or how about you're complaining about your job and instead of complaining

8:26 you realize that you can just go get a different one our lives are about choice and the power of choice is in your hands when you realize that your life will open up to all kinds of possibilities i'd love to hear from you what choice do you need to make and which path are you going to choose leave your feedback in the comments section below if you found this video helpful you don't want to miss what we have for

8:51 you in our other videos be sure to give this video a thumbs up subscribe to the channel and click on that notification bell also if you know some people that might enjoy this video please share it with them we'll see you next time