Choosing

I first ran into the concept of Choice Theory a long time ago when my father gave me a book, Stations of the Mind, by William Glasser. In it, Glasser discusses the theory and one of the things that has stuck with me was that there is a gap between stimulus and response and we choose how we react to each and every stimuli.

Now, I understand that many stimuli will cause an almost instantaneous response - such as putting your hand on a hot stove and immediately pulling it away. The key word there is "almost." Physiologically, there is a split second (however long that may actually be) that it takes for the nerve impulse to travel from the hand to the brain and back to the muscles of the arm to move the hand off the stove.

Of course, most of the book was not about how we respond to such physical events, but how we choose to perceive stimuli outside of our physical body.

Anyway, this book led me down a journey to other Glasser books and many thoughts about making choices in how we perceive the things that happen around us every day. I was reminded of this as I read an article by Jon Gordon about the difference between "get to" and "have to."

Do we "have to go to work" or do we "get to go to work?" We can exchange "get to" for "have to" in a lot of situations and have a totally different outlook on things. It certainly makes for a much better day.