The Most Powerful Verb

The other day I realized the most powerful verb in our language is choose.

Think about it, this one verb dictates our entire life. We choose to get up each morning. We choose our friends. We choose our paths. We choose our future. Our life is made up of a series of choices that mold us into who we are.

Everything good or bad has come from a choice you made at some time. So when will we wake up and choose to stop being a victim? When will we choose to shed the victim mentality and choose to be a victor?

We live in a world full of people making excuses and choosing to sit and whine and talk about how the world has done them wrong. If you sit and think about it for a minute, you will find the world doesn't owe you anything and that the things that have gone wrong are usually because you made bad choices. Reality really does suck sometimes, but a good dose now and then is beneficial.

Here's why this all frustrates me so much. I am surrounded by men and women who chose to serve our country. They knew the consequences and they chose to stay with it. They are now dealing with the consequences of their choices. Yet they are choosing to be so positive about it. These men and women inspire me daily. They are viewed as being medically broken, but I can tell you their attitude certainly is not.

In my own home, my soldier would choose the exact same path if you gave him the chance to do it all over. And if you give me a chance to do it over, I would say "I do," again in a heart beat. Our journey has been tough, but it's ours and we are proud of it.

Then enter a person who whines about everything. "My job was cruel to me." "I have (fill in the blank minor medical) problem." "You don't understand." These are the things I hear from people and they expect me to have sympathy. I have become numb to this. I am numb to the random excuses people create to justify their victim mentality.

I am now seeing a new generation of financial counseling clients. I call them the "easy button crew." They are looking for the easy button to push so they don't have to work hard. They really think that the world is going to hand them their dream job and all the money in the world with little to no effort. They think they shouldn't have to pay any taxes. They really think they are owed things. It is horribly unfortunate that somewhere we, as a society, have gone wrong with this group. And of course they are not all this way, I am just sad to say that I see more than I would like to. They come to me for financial counseling, but none of them want to give up living beyond their income. They just keep piling on the debt and they really do not think they are doing anything wrong at all. They are all having to hit absolute bottom in order to wake up and realize the tough choices that have to be made.

I have learned in my short life that nothing great comes easy. The easy path sure does look tempting, but it does not offer the blessings that comes with the harder path. I found this on pinterest the other day and it truly did inspire this blog.

Building our home is a great example of choices. We initially chose the easy path. Someone was supposed to build our home and they totally failed us. We weren't going to have to lift a finger. It all sounded so amazing and it was what our family needed. We gave the promise makers more than enough time to do anything at all to get our home started and finally said screw it we will figure this out.

No, we are not victims. We made a bad choice. We have zero problems owning up to the fact that we were wooed and we fell for it. Again I reiterate, we are not victims. We chose to trust this person and all of their hot-aired promises. Then reality smacked us and we made the choice to move on.

Yes we are paying for our home to be built. Yes writing those checks is quite painful, even nauseating at times. However, we have already realized the absolute best part of all of this is that person who was supposed to help us and bailed, well they are permanently out of our lives and have no strings over us anymore. As we look back now, we can already see we made a great choice in choosing to move on by ourselves.

Chaz and I could have chosen to have played the victim card. We could have gone to the media and smashed the person who failed us. We have had several offers to do so, but we will continue to choose the high road. The high road has been hard and painful and full of tears, but I know that this year when we move into that new home we will know without any doubt that it was all worth it.

Chaz and I have made all sorts of bad choices in our lives. I am sure we will make more as we move on. That's what we humans do, we mess up and we make mistakes. However if we set down the victim card, then we cannot triumph over our bad choices. We have to choose the victor card in order to win.

I truly pray that we will always remember the spoils of the harder path. And I pray that we will always choose the victor card. I really pray that the "easy button crew" finds reality sooner, than later.