by Carole Hannequin

I don’t know about you, but I’ve always had some difficulty in choosing. Not so much when there were rational elements to help me make a decision (and I’ve always been veery keen a gathering information to support any of my decisions), but when I only had to take into account my personal preferences, as in choosing a career or making plans for a vacation or a weekend, I always wanted to keep the most possibilities open, in order to be able to grasp a last minute better opportunity. So, very often, I ended up doing nothing on Sundays or taking no vacation. I waited so long that it was too late to undertake anything.

Last year my father died and I?miss him a lot. His death helped me to realize the brevity of life and I decided I would not like to die without seeing some of the beauties of the world. So I took a sabbatical year and went to see the midnight sun in the Lofoten Islands, Norway, went canyoning in the Spanish Pyrénées, visited the temples of Angkor, Cambodia, the imperial cities of Morocco, observed the wild life in the Okavango delta, Botswana, and marveled at the Victoria Falls of the Zambezi river in Zimbabwe. I was very happy with my choices and what I experienced. The latest of my choices was to review The Avatar Course—having taken the course for the first and only time fifteen years ago, I wanted to experience it anew.

While going through the Basic Life Alignment Mini-Course, I realized that one of my mother’s beliefs had been running my choice making—or not making. The belief I discovered was, “To choose is to renounce.” She used to say it whenever anyone was hesitant to make a choice, be it big or small. I liked this belief very much, I thought it was very true because many times I’d rather have everything than choose something. And for some reason, it sounded very wise to point out that when we choose something, we give up everything else. Each choice thus became solemn and the freedom to choose was colored by a sense of irrevocability—a bit scary, actually!

However that may be, the result on my life had not been so brilliant and I’d lost a lot of opportunities. Not to mention living deliberately! It was not easy to be deliberate when choosing was such a serious issue.

Doing the Avatar exercises, I realized that this belief was only expressing one perspective. Based on my experience of my sabbatical year, I decided that I’d consider choosing from another perspective and I changed the belief to, “To choose is to live.” This belief sounded much lighter and happier. Instead of pointing backward on what I was giving up, it highlighted the experience the decision would offer and was much more appealing to me.

Since then, it’s been much easier for me to choose. Instead of staying home on Sundays, I go to the local sports clubs of my valley in the mountains in France and pilot a quad or canoe down white waters. I know that any choice I make will offer an experience and I can continue or end the experience according to my preferences. It feels freer and more fun.

So if you experience a hindrance to your ability to live your life to the fullest, you might want to discover the belief you hold that impedes you and change it for one that supports you. On The Avatar Course it is easy to do and your sense of being at the helm of your life will increase dramatically.

Carole Hannequin, France

 

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