Active Choice

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TODAY’S READING:
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I am back in Los Angeles for the weekend. I drove back today for a couple reasons. One, my Dad and I have tickets to see Glen Hansard at Walt Disney Concert Hall on Sunday (which also happens to be my Dad’s birthday). Also, I am starting the process of recording an album tomorrow by laying down scratch tracks from which full arrangements will be constructed—and proper vocals will be recorded later. It’s an exciting time!

The idea of recording an album is daunting. There is a lot that goes into it, and there is no guarantee that whatever is created will have any appeal. So I could get lost in the fear of failure. That’s easy… but I refuse. I refuse to give in to the easy path of failure. The idea of failure is born of some idea in my own mind that I am not worth the trouble, so my lack of self-worth can easily derail the good that I want to do.

Gratefully, as Ernest Holmes writes, “that which thought has done, thought can un-do.” Here’s a caveat… we must spend more time in the active re-thinking rather than the attempting to “un-doing.” Too many times I have seen people (myself included) get caught up in trying to un-do the thinking that created a situation in the first place. It’s impossible… what we CAN do is think a new thought. This doesn’t delete the other thought, but it does diminish its creative power in our lives. This is an active process.

The active process is in making new choices.

Choice is really where it’s all at! The greatest gift we have been given (if we are going to conceptualize a gift having been given from “on high”) is the gift of choice. We are not automatons! We get to choose the unfoldment of our lives. Sometimes we make constructive choices, sometimes destructive—but the choices are ours and no-one else, so let’s own them. If we don’t like the outcome, we get to make a different choice.

So I begin the process of recording tomorrow. There will be many, many choices to be made regarding style, and sound, and tone… I am very excited about these choices. I also know that I can make different choices if I find that some of the choices I make don’t work. It’s a great feeling to know I have complete freedom—not just in recording, but in life!

So celebrate your freedom of choice. It’s a good thing!