Choice And Decisions And Sacrifice

Well, aloha and good morning.

It’s early morning here in Hawai‘i, it’s about quarter to seven. I love this time of day because it’s fairly quiet but also at this time of day quite often you’ll experience some real magic.

So, as I was walking down to the beach, the magic was there. It was this wonderful chanting. I mean, this woman with the most incredible chanting voice was standing on the beach with two people beside her and she could be heard for a very long way, all the way up the hill and that’s what Hawai‘ian magic can be like.

Chanting’s important in the Hawai‘ian culture but it’s not every day you go down to the beach and there’s somebody chanting at the sea, or the ocean as we call it around here.

I wanted to talk to you today about choice and decisions and sacrifice and the reason for that is because many, many of my clients really struggle with some of the choices and decisions that they have to make. A lot of them struggle with actually making a decision.

In the Hawai‘ian culture, decision making is fairly simple once you take into account the idea that every decision, every choice involves a sacrifice.

Now, I’m not talking here about the sacrifice of goats and humans, although it has to be said that was practised in ancient times, I’m talking here about the sacrifice that comes with choice.

When you make a choice, you’re making a sacrifice every single time because there are only 24 hours in the day and sooner or later it’s either one thing or another.

So, for example, my choice this morning, my sacrifice this morning was I could either go for my early morning swim – and I love an early morning swim – or I could take the time to do this video for you and I decided that I’d take the time to do the video for you.

I knew I wouldn’t be able to do both, yeah, sure, I kind of missed my swim because it’s a real joy and it’s a rare privilege really because the swimming pools near me aren’t up to much and there aren’t many of them. Here you get to swim in the ocean when it’s flat and calm. So, that was my sacrifice this morning.

Growing up as I did in the ’60s and the ’70s, we were taught as women that we could have it all and that meant, actually, that we had to work a lot harder.

A lot of women of my mother’s generation, they stayed at home, they looked after the kids, they worked hard in the home but they weren’t also going out to work and being busy in that way.

My mum chose to work, so she did both but there wasn’t this idea of you’ve got to have it all. It was a sense of, this is how we can organise our lives.

But now with this got to have it all, we can have it all culture, one of the challenges I see, is so many women stressed out of their brains because they’re trying to balance home, work, possibly parent care or care of others in the family and it’s hard.

Now, it’s not necessarily going to make it easier when you think of it in terms of sacrifice but it gives it a context and a concept.

So, the Hawai‘ian law of sacrifice says that we are making sacrifices all the time. It’s inescapable, it’s unavoidable but when you’re making choices and decisions, you can make the choice knowing that it’s a conscious choice.

Very often what we do is, because we think we have to have it all, we don’t make the conscious choice. It’s like I’ve got to do this, and I’ve got to do this, and I’ve got to do that.

No, it’s an either/or.

Either you go to the meeting. Or you go to the kids’ sports day. You know you’re not going to be able to do both, so why pretend to yourself that you’re going to be able to do both?

Either you’re working hard on your business in order to build a great life for yourself and your family if you have one. Or you’re on Facebook, you’re on Instagram, you’re reading a trashy novel or watching telly.

It’s a choice of how you use your time and, as I say, we don’t always have those choices but actually, the illusion that we create for ourselves is that they’re not choices and in fact, they always are.

It’s always a choice and it’s always your choice to make, even when you think you don’t have it because the law of sacrifice is basically about choice. We either do one thing or we do the other.

When you understand, when you really get it, that what you’re doing every moment is making a choice and whatever you decide not to do will be the thing that you sacrifice, then things start to fall into place, decisions become easier to make and hey, we have a choice. That is amazing.

So, step out of the illusion, step out of the story that you don’t have a choice, understand there always will be a sacrifice when you make a choice, there will always be the thing that you don’t do.

Embrace the sacrifice, embrace the choice and hopefully be a little bit less stressed about it all.

Have a great day and I’ll talk to you very soon.

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