There are no Small Choices in Life

Life offers you millions of opportunities to grow. When you reject these opportunities you make choices that are Capitulations. These Capitulations build up massive restrictions that eventually limit your potential.

The Fork on the Road

Life offers you millions of opportunities to grow your potential, express your Unique Essence, live out your Life Purpose and create the quality of life that your Soul desires.  Most opportunities, however do not come with a large tag saying

I’m an opportunity. Take me!”

Quite the contrary is often true. These opportunities often come in the guise of tough decisions, problems to be solved, scary challenges and change.

When you meet one of these undercover opportunities you are standing on a fork in the road of your life.

On one side of the fork stands the Worn-out Road, the easy, familiar road of your past. It is narrow with learned limitations and limiting roles. But it feels safe because it’s a known. Your logical mind only recognizes as true what it knows from the past; so this road feels real.

On the other side of the fork stands the Road-not-traveled. This is Opportunity Lane. But because it is unknown and unfamiliar, it is scary. The logical mind finds this road life-threatening and unreal because it does not recognize its geography. You can only see this landscape with your intuition, your imagination and with the wisdom of your BodySoul or your heart.

Capitulations

Nine out of ten, we take the dusty Worn-out Road. When we do this, we capitulate. Here are some synonyms for Capitulation: submit, yield, give away, cede, give in, admit defeat, give up, acquiesce, succumb, resign yourself to. They don’t promise much, eh?

The small Capitulations you’ve created in your life solidify with time to create the great limitations that trap you. This article shows you how this happens and how to avoid building a life that is a jail.

They say that the devil is in the details and I’ve been recently shown how true this is.

I’ve watched a woman who had a free, independent spirit build a cage of fear and oblivion that now confines her in her old age.

Let’s call her Emma.

Emma was a free-spirited woman who came of age in the 50s. When all her sisters and friends were training to be housewives, Emma had her own job, drove her own car and managed her own money.

Emma was fiercely independent.

She escaped the conventions of her time to dance, drink and have a jolly good time in the cabarets and dancing halls.

She had unconventional love liaisons, though staying within her still traditional values.

But Emma gave in to two Capitulations. They were tiny, compared to the freedom and independence she created in her life.

The Fear Capitulation

Emma often gave in to fear. She would feed the fear-mongering stories around her from pieces of news or gossip, until she became nervous and made decisions based on fear.

She began to avoid anything unpleasant by going into a panic. During this panic attacks she repeated these words: “I’m too nervous. I can’t cope with this. I’m confused. I can’t handle this.”

It worked. Someone would come to the rescue.

But when another person intervened to make decisions for Emma, the decisions were made based on the other person’s preferences, values and perception ~not on Emma’s Personal Truth.

Emma was giving her power away at the crucial moments in life where she had to make a stand. As a result, Emma began to avoid taking responsibility for the decisions and the life she had created. When the consequences of her decisions exploded on her face, she would go into a panic and others would step in and save the day.

The Fear Capitulation, which began as avoidance, became a habit and pretty soon a way of life. Emma began to believe the words she repeated: that she was incapable of coping with change or crisis and that she got too confused to handle things.

The Good Girl Capitulation

Perhaps because Emma was so different, she became very attached to being approved by her elders in order to be loved and accepted. She attached her identity to being a good girl, an obedient daughter.

When her fiancé left her Emma was heart-broken. She moved to New York to escape the pain, but also to pursue her dream of becoming a fashion designer.

Unfortunately, the gentleman followed her to New York. Emma’s mother, believing that she had planned a romantic escapade, ordered her back home.

Emma obeyed, leaving a scholarship to study fashion design in New York to go back home to the same old life. She did not fight for her dream because she was too attached to her good girl role. As a result, she betrayed her dream and her freedom.

From that moment on, Emma began a routine life dedicated to hard work in a factory and the pursuit of a husband. She became like the other women around her.

The Capitulation Detention

Fast forward sixty years. Emma is now in her 80s. Her husband died. Her mother died. She is alone. She has been sacked from the factory where she worked for 40 years. What is left of Emma’s free spirit and fierce independence?

She is plagued by fears and drowns her disappointment in alcohol.

The alcohol has affected her brain and she is descending into the world of dementia.

She invents stories in which women are being attacked in the streets around her house by evil men. That old story is always playing in her mind, keeping her in eternal detention, locked in her apartment.

Her mind is closing in on her, so that the words she so often repeated are becoming true now. Emma is confused and cannot cope with life.

Building the Capitulation Prison

Capitulation begins as a defense or avoidance strategy. You may do it unconsciously, as an emotional reaction or consciously, as a way of getting out of a jam.

It seems inoffensive. If someone would tell you that you are engaging in self-betrayal, you would think it an exaggeration. It is just a tiny choice in a tiny moment. How could this tiny choice affect all of your life? The very idea seems preposterous.

Capitulation seems the easy way to go. It entices you with the promise of ease, acceptance and safety. You give in to other people’s pressures. You give away your power. You refuse to take responsibility for the consequences of your acts. You avoid making a tough decision. You avoid standing up for what you believe and deeply desire. Everybody is happy and you avoid confrontation, hardship, change and consequences.

The price you pay for each Capitulation, however, is monstrous; no matter how tiny the Capitulation seems.

Each instance in which you use Capitulation to avoid standing in your Personal Truth is a stone in the prison you are creating.

After several years, the avoidance strategy becomes a habit. After a couple more years, the habit becomes an automatic response.

After some time, you attach this way of responding to your Personal Identity. You have now become your Capitulation.

This Capitulation has calcified in your physical existence as a lifestyle, in your being as the thoughts and words you repeat to yourself and in your body as imbalance or dis-ease.

There are no small choices in life.

Impeccability: the Antidote to Capitulations

From a shamanic standpoint, Impeccability is the art of staying true to your Personal Truth and your Essence.

It demands that you stay in touch with your Soul and what is important to you.

It demands that you are willing to take responsibility for your choices and their consequences.

Impeccability is not perfection, but the courage to act in ways that are congruent with your Soul, your organic nature and your Dreams.

Cultivate the art of Impeccability at all times. Refuse to take the easy way out. Rather, take the way that leads into your Personal Truth, through your organic self and into a life of unfolding potential.

This courage yields a life of freedom. It gives you wings to fly high into your dreams.

In a life of impeccable choices, you create a fluid, flowing lifestyle that is open to the River of Life. The streams of life flow in your life, washing away what is not good and bringing new tools and vibrations to renew you.

Impeccability creates a lifestyle of choosing from the Soul and walking your talk. It creates the discipline of choosing the right road when you meet the fork of opportunities. It even helps you recognize the undercover opportunities in your life.

Impeccability avoids calcification and keeps you young. When you are impeccable, your being is constantly changing, growing and using all its faculties to express your Essence.

When you are impeccable, you experience Coherence, which is the source of profound wellbeing. Coherence means that your heart and your mind are in harmony. This eliminates the stress that creates dis-ease. This lifestyle manifests in your body as wellbeing.

Whenever you make a choice, shift from fear and habit into Soul and Impeccability. This is the way to make great choices that create a life of freedom and delight.

—-The End—-

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