How to Make Unfixated Choices

To be aware, notice where our mind is going, then direct it. The larger our capacity, the more space we can create between stimulus and response.

the life-enhancing route is to think of decisions not as things that come along, but as things to go hunting for. In other words: to operate on the assumption that somewhere, in the confusing morass of your work or your life, lurks at least one decision you could make, right now, in order to get unstuck and get moving.

The psychologist Viktor Frankl observed, “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

Our options may be things, but a choice—a choice is an action. It is not just something we have but something we do. This experience brought me to the liberating realization that while we may not always have control over our options, we always have control over how we choose among them.

Viktor Frankl, the American psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, observed: ‘Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.’22