Driving Your Own Car: A Road To Personal Freedom
by Angele Marino, LMSW-ACP, LMFT

Well-being is a matter of choice.

Just imagine your favorite car and you are in the driver' s seat. You choose where you are going and you choose the time to get there. You are in effective control of your life.

Is this a dream or a reality?

We don' t have control over other people and over many events. We do have control over how we will respond. We can choose to be miserable, or to be more fulfilled. You know what I mean. We have all experienced dealing with the extra load of work dropped on our desk-just when we were going to the gym to work out; or, that urgent phone call from a daughter saying she needs a ride to her unscheduled ball practice.

At first glance it appears "others" are controlling you. You cannot get what you want and need. However, Choice Theory explains how human beings operate. If we are driving our car, we can get our needs met; that is, we will get our exercise. If we let others drive our car, we probably will be feeling miserable. This is our choice.

So here we sit with two goods: When work is handed to us at the last minute, we are faced with (1) the desire to workout and (2) we want to be our best on the job. It' s almost like having two roads to go down. Part of making good choices is to actively know why each choice is important. Honor yourself by valuing your previous choices. You chose to workout because you want to manage your health, to gain more muscle tone, to be with someone special, etc. Be clear and see and feel yourself at the end of the workout. Notice how good it feels. Be in touch with your own needs especially around empowerment/power, freedom, fun, and even love and belonging (especially of yourself and maybe others). Working out could provide which of these needs?

Be in touch with yourself and explore how this extra work placed on your desk at the last minute might relate to getting your basic needs met, as noted in the last paragraph.. This is being in touch with yourself. So often we feel pulled and tossed. When several needs are in competition with each other, if we are not centered and aware, we can lose ourselves.

Being of the advanced species, we have the potential for consciously getting our basic needs met and feel more satisfied and fulfilled. Given our capacity to be creative, problem solve and identify options, we can be in charge, create new roads that can make a difference for ourselves and those in our lives. Because you are clear why it' s important to you to workout as well as get the job done, you will be focused, feel less threatened , have more energy to explore ways of being good to yourself. Congratulations!

This is the first of other writings applying Choice Theory by William Glasser, MD to moving toward well being.

Angele Marino, LMSW-ACP, LMFT is a psychotherapist in private practice and co-founder of the Expressive Therapies Center (ETC). She is a faculty member for the William Glasser Institute providing courses in Reality Therapy/Choice Theory. Promoting Healthy Sexuality/Healthy Relationships is one of her favorite things to do. Her clients are families, couples, singles, adolescents and children. Working as a family enhances the journey toward greater well-being. She can be reached by e-mail at mangele@ix.netcom.com or visit ETC' s website at www.expressivetherapies.com.