🔗 You make agreements

Patrick Rhone on the For You blog writes about our social agreements that influence choice:

Your choices are guided, balanced, and reigned in by agreements. You make as many agreements as you do choices…

They are happening all around us between everyone constantly. Agreements are the fabric of what we call culture and society. A set of rules and agreements we mostly choose to participate in or decide not to when appropriate…

It is important to understand this. Because your choices may or may not break certain agreements. And there will often be consequences for doing so…

The choices we make are not made in a vacuum. Making and keeping the right agreements is what keeps you in harmonious balance with the rest of the world.

The nature of choice is complex but knowable. Whether we acknowledge it or not, choice involves selecting one option and leaving others behind. It means letting go certain possibilities. Choice affects how a relationship evolves and if it will end.

We make choices for many reasons: love, good intentions, doubt, convenience, conviction, self-worth. We may feel uncomfortable with ambiguity or ambivalence and decide on a safe choice or a risky one. We could be choosing between two compelling but competing priorities. Perhaps we should admit that we are usually guessing and doing the best we can with our current level of knowledge and understanding most of the time.

Every choice leads to another choice. Decide which agreements (and their associated relationships and social contracts) are worth honoring and pursuing. Assessing which relationships matter early and often is a solid foundation for a decision framework that will dramatically improve overall well-being and self-fulfillment throughout life.

Do not let yourself believe you can do all things. Or perhaps more accurately, be all things to all people. In essence, that choice ultimately leads to an unsustainable and unsatisfactory end.

It is much better to know who you are, be what you want to be, and make choices based upon healthy and meaningful relationships.