It’s Your Choice

It’s Your Choice

Today I have given you the choice between life and death, between blessings and curses. Now I call on heaven and earth to witness the choice you make. Oh, that you would choose life, so that you and your descendants might live!

Deuteronomy 30:19

“I never knew I had a choice.” It’s the saddest sentence we ever hear in our counseling offices. Many things in life are beyond our control—our eye color, our race, hurricanes. But there is a vast, unclaimed territory of actions over which we have a major say.

In a very simple experiment, psychologists Ellen Langer of Harvard and Judith Rodin of Yale clearly demonstrated the beneficial effects of making choices for oneself.^a They gave a group of nursing home residents potted plants to care for. In addition to taking responsibility for the little plants, they were also offered suggestions on doing more for themselves, making their own decisions, instead of letting the staff do that for them. A second group, matched with the first in terms of degree of ill health or disability, received the usual nursing home treatment with the staff announcing that they would be responsible for the residents’ care, making all the decisions for them.

Within three weeks, the first group showed significant improvement in physical and emotional health and the amount of activity engaged in. Even more dramatic were the results after eighteen months. The death rate of the group encouraged to make their own decisions was only half that of the other group.

So what decision—what choices—are calling you? More specifically, what choice can the two of you make, starting today, that will positively impact your relationship? In fact, let’s get even more specific. What choice to do something you wouldn’t have done otherwise can the two of you make that will benefit your relationship within the next four days? Why four? you wonder. Because it’s measurable and can quickly demonstrate the powerful impact of making a choice together.

You may choose to take a walk together after dinner each night for the next four nights. You may choose to have a long-overdue date night together. You may choose to help a needy neighbor. You get the idea. The point is simply to choose to do something that helps you become the kind of couple you want to be.

Someone once said that there are always two choices, two paths to take. One is easy and that is its only reward. More often than not, that easy path is to make no choice at all. Make a positive choice for the life of your relationship today.

If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, . . . you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all you have left is compromise.

—Robert Fritz

^a 17