Welcome to the Becoming The Change Podcast. Each daily reading focuses on a different quote on how we can best apply it to our own moral compass and one of the five areas in Social Emotional Learning: Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Social Awareness, Relationship Skills and Responsible Decision Making. Thank you for listening and we hope you consider subscribing to the podcast for future episodes.
Choices and Consequences
“Choice of attention—to attend to this and ignore that—is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases a man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences.”
-W.H. Auden, The Complete Workers W. H. Auden volume VI
With every choice we make there is always a consequence to follow. Sometimes good and sometimes bad. What we choose to give our attention to specifically is followed by certain actions on our part. As American poet W.H. Auden further explains in today’s quote when we choose what to focus on, we are undoubtingly ignoring something else. The bottom line is this: no matter what, we are responsible for the choices we make and what happens as a result of it.
When this occurs we need to remember we have no one to blame but ourselves if the decision we make happens to be the wrong one. We need to man up or woman up and accept it. We also cannot complain that things did not turn out the way we had hoped and harp on that fact. It won’t miraculously change the outcome and if we do not cease in the complaining department, those around us will not want to be anymore. We need to change our perspective by changing our emotional response to the situation and our connection to it. When we do this we can move forward with things and our lives.
We cannot avoid making mistakes because they are unavoidable not matter how hard we try. We must own them when they happen. And they will happen. The fear of making mistakes should not prevent us from making future decisions either. When we accept responsibility for our decisions we also personally grow more and become better for it.
What does this quote mean to you and how can you apply today’s message towards developing your responsible decision making skills?
To subscribe to the podcast please go to Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Music from https://filmmusic.io
“Relaxing Piano Music” by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)
License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
A special thank you to Feedspot for recognizing the Becoming The Change podcast as one of the Top 10 Social Emotional Learning Podcasts on the internet. It is an honor to be amongst the other podcasts on this list as we all strive to make this world a better place.
Becoming The Change 