From the morning sunrise to the beautiful sunset, you are constantly surrounded by choices: what to wear, eat, drink, listen to, where to go to, who to see, what do to - the list is endless. When your alarm goes off on a cold winter morning in the middle of a beautiful sleep and you have to wake up and go to class/work/hustle... you are faced with two choices; enjoy your beautiful sleep and forever remain poor, or get up and make something out of your life. Sometimes you may not realise that you do have a choice because the circumstances you find yourself in are daunting or because you're feeling powerless in a certain situation. Tell you what: it's only natural for you to feel like that at times, but just don't ever give in to that way of thinking... that you don't have a choice. A mind is one tool that can easily be manipulated by what you feed it. If you keep thinking that you have no choice over a situation; that’s exactly what you're going to see - a situation without choices, when in reality you actually have a choice. 

Today, so many people are stuck in intolerable situations, loveless relationships and unfavorable work environments only because "they don't have a choice", so they believe. So many people abhor their jobs but because those jobs pay their bills; they feel like they have no choice but to stick around for the sake of financial sanity. Thousands if not millions of women across the world are today stuck in abusive relationships only because the guy is financially loaded and they feel that they don't have a choice but to stick around for the sake of maintaining the "rich" lifestyle they are now used to. Tell you what; every single morning when you wake up, you are faced with countless choices. You can wake up every morning and go to that very same job of which the thought alone drains all the positive energy from you or you can wake up and follow your passion/heart; go and pursue what you really want to do in life. Ladies, you have a choice to walk out of that abusive relationship or stay... and be carried out of that abusive relationship in a coffin. There is no way in hell you can have a choice of getting yourself into something but not have a choice to get yourself out. There is no way! That mentality of believing that you don't have a choice is the very same thing that holds you back from realising that your life is a matter of choices you make and not situations you find yourself in. Tell you what; not making a choice is a choice on its own, as you're choosing not to make a choice because you believe that you don't have a choice... when in actual fact; you do! 

Think about it... 

I have seen great progress being interrupted all because someone felt that they had no choice but to respond/react to the distractions which ended up derailing them from their plans; I have seen people dying poor because they believed that they had no choice but to be poor simply because they were born out of poverty; I have seen people die unhappy and miserable because they believed that they had no choice but to be miserable; I have seen people fall and fail to rise because they think that they don't have a choice to rise again but to forever remain defeated; I have seen men subject women to the same physical and emotional abuse that their mothers were subjected to by their fathers all because they accepted the non-existence of choices to be someone far better and greater than what their fathers were. As the saying goes: "You have no power over what happens but you have power over how you react" and this quote is a perfect representation of just how we always have a choice in the midst of any situation. The moment you accept that you alone have the choice to feel, think, achieve, do, and say whatever you want... is the moment you will turn around your life for good. It's the moment you will always find it easy to take full responsibility for how your life is going at that moment or how it turned out, instead of blaming situations and people. 

Right at this moment, you are exactly where you are because of the choices you have made so far in life. From this point onwards; take charge and control of your destiny. Nothing and no one can hold you back from being anything you desire, but yourself! Remember this: The choices we make directly affects our lives because, at the end of the day, you have to live with the consequences of your choices. Make the right choices! 

Happy CHOOSEday! 

#NoAlarmClockNeededMyChoiceWakesMeUp

Fannie Zim is a practicing and Admitted Attorney of the High Court of South Africa.