Choose Intentionally
Every choice shapes the life around it—including what we tolerate, decline, keep, and release.
Being Chosen Is Not the Same as Choosing
For much of my life, I allowed myself to be selected.
I accepted relationships with men who chose me, even when what they offered did not meet my needs—and I had little reason to choose them in return.
I followed a career path that largely fell into my lap rather than deliberately identifying and pursuing the work I wanted. I allowed managers to determine what I was capable of and which opportunities I should have.
I maintained friendships with people who chose me, even when those relationships hurt me. I rarely established a boundary and almost never decided that a friendship no longer belonged in my life.
The pattern was the same: I responded to the relationships, opportunities, and expectations presented to me without consistently asking whether I would have chosen them for myself.
I was participating in my life, but I wasn’t always choosing it.
Survival does not teach intentionality
I understand now that some of this began in childhood.
My childhood was about survival. I didn’t spend much time dreaming, imagining possibilities, or defining what I wanted my future to become. I learned how to respond to what was happening around me.
I also didn’t develop a clear standard for how I should be treated. When poor treatment is normalized early, tolerating it can feel more familiar than questioning it. You learn to adapt, accommodate, and endure.
Those skills can help a child survive. But carried unconsciously into adulthood, they can make it difficult to build a life intentionally.
There is an important difference between having a preference and making a choice.
A preference says, I would like this.
An intentional choice says, This is what I am seeking, this is what I am willing to do to support it, and this is what I will no longer accept in its place.
That requires more than knowing what you want. It requires establishing a standard—and accepting the possibility that someone or something may not meet it.
Why choosing can feel dangerous
Choosing intentionally creates the possibility of receiving a clear answer.
If I stated what I wanted from a relationship, I risked hearing that the other person didn’t want the same thing. If I named the opportunity I wanted at work, I risked rejection or dismissal. If I established a boundary in a friendship, I risked losing the friendship.
As long as I kept my intentions private, I could replay them safely inside my own mind. I could think about what I wanted, question why it wasn’t happening, and grieve its absence without creating the moment when someone might definitively say no.
But avoiding a clear choice did not protect me from disappointment. It prolonged uncertainty while allowing other people’s preferences to shape my life.
Eventually, choosing intentionally meant becoming willing to lose something: a relationship, an opportunity, someone’s approval, or the comfort of remaining quiet.
It meant accepting that preserving every possibility can also preserve the very life that is leaving you unfulfilled.
Boundaries are choices
I don’t think of boundaries as restrictions. I think of them as standards for what I choose to value, protect, permit, and participate in.
One of the most important boundaries I established was with my father in late 2009. I decided that I would no longer allow him to speak to me in an abusive way.
That decision was about one relationship, but its meaning extended far beyond it. It forced me to acknowledge that shared history, family connection, or another person’s expectations did not require me to accept harmful treatment in that relationship—or any other.
By holding that boundary, I began raising the standard for how I expected to be treated elsewhere.
Years later, in 2022, I made another intentional choice: I sold my house in the suburbs and moved downtown. The move was more than a change of address. It was a decision about the kind of life I wanted to experience and the environment in which I wanted to build it.
I also stopped treating the absence of a romantic relationship as a problem that had to be solved. I had already stepped away from dating, but that period became an opportunity to turn my attention inward—to understand myself more fully instead of searching for someone else to make my life feel complete.
None of these choices guaranteed a particular outcome. Intentional decisions rarely do.
They did, however, move me from waiting to be chosen toward actively designing my own life.
How do we know whether a choice is aligned?
Today, I begin by asking whether a choice supports the goals I have defined for myself.
I consider how it fits within the life I am building—not only whether it is appealing, available, or comfortable in the present moment.
I also examine how the decision is likely to feel across time:
How will this choice feel in the short term?
What will it create or require in the medium term?
Will I be glad I made it when I consider the longer arc of my life?
Does it support what I say I value?
Am I choosing from intention, or reacting from fear?
What am I agreeing to tolerate if I say yes?
What am I protecting or making possible if I say no?
This doesn’t make every decision easy. We can talk to trusted friends, seek guidance, gather information, and consider different perspectives. But no matter how many people we consult, we are still the ones who must choose.
And refusing to choose is still a choice.
From awareness to action
Making an aligned decision can be difficult because the visible choice is rarely the whole choice.
We may need to uncover the root issue, separate facts from fears, examine the available options, consider the consequences, and determine what action comes next. We may also need support following through after the decision has been made.
The Defined Living™ Life Audit is designed to create structure around that process. It helps a woman examine what is happening beneath the surface, recognize the patterns shaping her choices, and identify where her life no longer aligns with what she values.
Within that larger examination, the Defined Living™ Decision Framework provides a repeatable way to evaluate an individual choice and move it toward action.
The purpose is not to eliminate uncertainty or guarantee the perfect decision. It is to help a woman make her choice consciously—with a clearer understanding of what she wants, what she values, what she is willing to accept, and what she is prepared to release.
Because being wanted, selected, or offered something does not automatically make it right for you.
Being chosen is not the same as choosing.
EDIT: For much of my life, I responded to the relationships, opportunities, and expectations presented to me without consistently asking whether I would have chosen them for myself.
