By Carla Daniels

Choose you this day….(Joshua 24:15)

Do you think about some of the choices you make on a daily basis? Some are so automatic that you don’t even notice that you’ve made a choice. These are not agonizing choices; they are probably done with little or no effort. What about choices that tax your brain? In a 2008 article in Scientific American entitled, “Tough Choices: How Making Decisions Tires Your Brain,” the author, On Amir, looks at research about how choices can exhaust the brain thus affecting your decision making later in the day. This is known as “executive function.” In layman terms: I have often had “brain drain” where after a very cerebral day, I can’t make a simple decision like what to eat for dinner. Like most of you, I have a job that requires me to make a lot of decisions throughout the day. Some days the decisions are easy. There are days when I have to choose to fire someone or which item to do on my “to do” list. These are stressful days and cause me to tax my “executive function.”

When you start making life-altering choices, you must be deliberate about who enters your life and who you remove from your circle of influence. Whether your friends stand around and give you direct advice or you have conversations with them, they are influencing you in some way. Are they yeasayers who encourage you to do the right thing and seek your higher power or are they naysayers who encourage you to blow it off and just do what you want with no regard for the consequences?

Pastor Jamal Bryant has a sermon entitled, “I Had to Date Them.” It looks at Judges Chapter 14 about Samson. In it, he says that some people are stinking up your life because they won’t move on or you won’t let them go. When you have a funky life, no one wants to be around you because you stink and that stench is latching onto their lives. You know the saying, “Birds of a feather flock together.” If your friends have messy lives, people will think you have a messy life also.

How are you living your life? When tomorrow comes, where will you be when it’s time to stand before your Creator looking back over your life? Will you see moments of an unlived life? A life where you wanted to give up and probably did or where you could have made a choice to follow your dreams, but chose a life less fulfilling because you had obligations and the two would clash? You only live once. What are you waiting for to live it?

Carla is a certified NCTI Real Colors facilitator and Gallup Strengths Quest certified. Contact her at carla@hmgconsultants.com or visit her website a www.hmgconsultants.com