What is shaping our choices?

Are we living, or spending most of our energy keeping up?

For a long time, I would have said that I was leading my own life. I made decisions, worked hard, took responsibility and got things done. I built a career, raised a family and kept moving. From the outside there was plenty of evidence that I was in charge of my life.

Looking back, I can also see how much attention I gave to what was expected of me and what seemed sensible. I became very good at responding, adapting and being useful. None of that is wrong. But I did not always stop to ask what I wanted, what mattered to me, or whether the direction I was moving in was still mine.

That has been one of the more uncomfortable things curiosity has helped me notice. I was making choices, of course, but I was not always aware of what was driving them. Sometimes I was choosing from genuine commitment. At other times habit, responsibility or simply wanting to do a good job had more influence than I realised.

There was no dramatic moment when I suddenly took control of my life. It has been much more ordinary than that.

I started paying closer attention to myself. I noticed what gave me energy and what drained it. I noticed certain work and ideas kept pulling me back even when nobody was asking me to pursue them. And I began catching myself saying yes before I had really considered whether I wanted to.

Over time, that awareness changed some of my choices. Not all at once, and not always in the most convenient way.

I still have responsibilities, people I care about, financial realities and circumstances I cannot simply choose away. Leading our own lives does not mean we get to design every condition around us.

For me, agency is much more practical than that. It is being able to notice what is influencing me and recognise where there is still a choice.

Notice what is shaping you.

Sometimes that choice is significant. Often it is very small. I might still say yes, finish the thing, help someone or stay with a direction I have already chosen. But there is a difference between doing that consciously and simply being carried into the next thing because it is what I usually do.

What shapes our choices is not only habit, expectations or responsibility. Our curiosity shapes them too. What catches our attention, what we keep returning to and what we decide to follow can all influence the direction we take.

Curiosity is something we all have. But how much do we actually make of it?

We can become more aware of our curiosity too, and take more ownership of how we use it.

For me, this is part of disciplined curiosity.

Natural curiosity can pull us in all sorts of directions. Disciplined curiosity does not mean trying to control that. It means becoming more aware of where our curiosity is taking us and learning when it is worth following, when something needs questioning, when it is time to let go and when it is time to act.

This is one reason Notice → Think → Act has become such a useful practice for me.

I notice something. Maybe I am irritated, rushing or simply feeling slightly off. Instead of immediately reacting or judging myself for it, I can get curious about what is going on.

Then I think about what matters here and what choice is actually available to me. And then I act.

The answer may be to do exactly what I was about to do. The difference is that I have seen the choice rather than simply being carried into it. Today I feel much more that I am leading my life than I did before.

That does not mean I have everything figured out or that every choice is deliberate. I still react and find myself back in old patterns. Sometimes I only realise afterwards that I was moving too quickly or giving far too much attention to something that did not really matter.

But I notice more now, and I return faster. That matters because life keeps asking things of us.

People need us. Work becomes busy. Technology keeps creating new possibilities and new things competing for our attention. There will always be something else we could follow, fix, learn or worry about.

I do not want the answer to be withdrawing from all of that. I want to take part in life, relationships, work and change without handing over all of my attention and direction to them.

Perhaps leading our own lives is partly this simple. Not controlling everything. Not endlessly analysing ourselves.

Just becoming more aware of what is shaping us, staying curious enough to question it, and remembering that even inside a life full of responsibilities there are choices that are still ours to make.

This is my life. I want to keep taking part in shaping it.

What is shaping your choices right now?