Exercise your choice to build confidence

We make choices every day. The ability to choose is one of the faculties that a human being has, perhaps more than other forms of life. We can use our intellect to choose. As we use our intellect more and more to make choices that benefit us, we strengthen our intellect and our confidence in our intellect. The intellect enables us to make wise choices that benefit us in the short term as well as the long term. It is important to use the intellect to make wise choices. It is also important to execute on those choices and stick to them in the present. But it is also important to take feedback from the world to be grounded with reality and refine one's choices as needed. The following steps are involved in making choices and implementing them: 1) Use your awareness to choose to use your intellect rather than your conditioned mind to make your choices 2) Use your awareness to select the right inputs based on internal priorities as well external factors (such as the time, place, situation, other people involved) to provide to your intellect 3 Use your intellect, reasoning, and discrimination to provide appropriate importance to the internal factors and the external factors, and taking all the factors and attributed importance into consideration, make the right choice for you in the present. 4) Once the choice is made, stick to it and execute to it your best in the present 5) Revisit the choice, but only when the external factors change substantially 6) Observe the effect of the choice in reality, and gather feedback from the external world 7) If the feedback suggests growth and expansion, stick to the choice 8) If the feedback is negative...relook at the factors and attributed importance and recompute the choice 9) If feedback is consistently negative irrespective of the alterations in factors and attributed importance, alter the internal priorities 10) Reiterate, repeat and refine A life that is lived by choice and not by default is a life of constant growth and expansion. A life that is lived without choice or by default is a life of stagnation and decay. In making the right choice, awareness is important to overrule the conditioned mind and apply the intellect. The conditioned mind is like a default option of 'autopilot' that makes some approximations based on the past, and takes decisions without considering all the factors. The conditioned mind is judgemental, and it takes decisions based on false priorities, false assumptions, and false impressions. The conditioned mind attaches value or importance to past choices made by it, and gives a higher importance to assumptions and judgements made by it in the past over external factors and internal priorities. The conditioned mind also identifies with or attaches to the choices it makes, so it is less responsive to feedback from reality. It tries to defend and justify its choices, even if the choices were made based on incorrect assumptions or inaccurate information. The conditioned mind is 'closed' and limited. The intellect is open and flexible. It does not get ''affected' by past choices and it looks at each computation independent of past computations. The intellect is detached from identification with the choice (it is neutral), but it too has some limitations based on the priorities and assumptions that are provided to it. Hence awareness is important to know oneself, one's values, one's goals and objectives, and to determine one's internal priorities.