9 Choices

Foster &Hicks

The nine choices are:

1) Intention - having the active desire and commitment to be happy and making the fully conscious decision to choose happiness over unhappiness;
2) Accountability - assuming full responsibility for your actions, thoughts and feelings and the emphatic refusal to blame others for your own unhappiness;
3) Identification – the ongoing process of looking deeply within yourself to assess what makes you uniquely happy, apart from what you’re told by others should make you happy;
4) Centrality – the nonnegotiable insistence on making that which creates happiness central to your life;
5) Recasting – the choice to convert problems into opportunities and challenges and to transform trauma into something meaningful, important and a source of emotional energy;
6) Options – the decision to approach life by creating multiple scenarios, to be open to new possibilities and to adopt a flexible approach to life’s journey;
7) Appreciation – the choice to appreciate deeply your life and the people in it and to stay in the present by turning each experience into something precious;
8) Giving – the choice to share yourself with friends and community and to give to the world at large without expectation of a “return;”
9) Truthfulness – the choice to be honest with yourself and others in an accountable manner by not allowing social, corporate or family demands to violate your internal contract.