Read Physis Scotland Director, Fiona Cook’s latest blog where she shares how a decision made in her teens changed the course of her life.
Somebody said this phrase to me recently when they were talking about a time in their life when a big choice had to be made which then changed the whole direction of their life moving forward …and it got me thinking.
Have you ever considered the life you didn’t live, and do we recognise the way we choose to live the lives we have lived and are living when we look back? Do we have any regrets about the lives we didn’t live or are we grateful for the ones we have lived and are living? Or a bit of both perhaps?
Berne and his colleagues, when developing the concepts of Transactional Analysis, would of course talk about script formation and how our early unconscious decisions about ourselves and the world influences our personality development and decisions about how we live our lives, until we are able to make choices about what we are doing and how we are doing it.
Thinking about my life, for example I wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t purposely failed my Biology Higher in my final year at school so that I didn’t have to go to Edinburgh University. I was scared about going to university and believed I was not clever enough to study at Uni level, so I made a choice to ensure that I did not gain entry to university. I now know my belief was a contaminated belief and I would have been fine, but at that stage of my life, my contaminations won! I went to Queen Margaret College to study nursing instead and made friends for life there. If I had gone to Edinburgh University, I would maybe never have met them, but I would have achieved my undergraduate degree earlier in my life instead of waiting until well into my thirties to get this.
So, what influences how we make choices about our lives? Definitely our early script decisions do. How we choose to meet our hungers as well. Our beliefs about ourselves can drive or inhibit our choices. I know my fear of failure has influenced my choice on many occasions. Feeling anxious and nervous about choices can often invite passivity and before we know it, the opportunity, initially presented, might have passed.
I wish I had learned about Transactional Analysis earlier in my life. I wish I knew it was ok to ask for help earlier in my life. But I didn’t. And I also now want to honour the choices I have made because much of who I am was put in place to help me survive. If I had my life over again, I would probably make the same choices.
Years ago, I remember asking my therapist if she thought I was getting better after we had been working together for around 4 years. Her answer was profound. She said ‘Fiona, you were ok when we started working together and you are still ok now.’ She didn’t measure my worth or my life by how I was doing or decisions I had made, it was all about who I was and am. I have never forgotten that.
All of us at some time might wonder about the lives we didn’t live as we consider the lives we have lived. None of us can choose some of what has happened to us in our past, but we can all make choices about how we live our lives now and moving forward. So, my invitation for us all is to find tolerance, acceptance and compassion for the lives we have lived and are living and strive to make decisions and positive choices, out of script, as we move forward so that we are definitely living the life we want to live.
Oh, and always remember you are OK. You always were and you are still now.