In this episode, Dr. Cari Wise discusses the difference between choosing and deciding, emphasizing that choosing opens up unlimited possibilities while deciding often limits options.
She encourages listeners to make empowered choices, recognize where they have limited themselves in a binary decision, and to explore the fears that hold them back from choosing boldly.
Key Takeaways:
- Choosing opens up unlimited opportunities
- Deciding limits possibilities
- Fear causes us to limiting our choices
- Empowered choices move us towards what we want to create
- New choices do not mean past choices were wrong
- Choosing what’s right for you benefits everyone
Resources:
Elevate: Critical information every veterinary professional must have in order to personally thrive, and not simply survive, a career in veterinary medicine.
Vet Life Academy: Transform your life and veterinary career from the inside out. Decrease stress, increase balance, leave work at work… everything is possible!
https://joyfuldvm.com/vetlifeacademy
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
This transcript is auto-generated and may contain typos.
Hi there. I’m Dr. Cari Wise, veterinarian, certified life coach and certified quantum human design specialist. If you are a veterinary professional looking to uplevel your life and your career or maybe looking to go in an entirely new direction, then what I talk about here on the Joyful DVM podcast is absolutely for you. Let’s get started. Hello my friends. Welcome back to the joyful DVM podcast.
Today we’re gonna be spending a few minutes exploring the idea of choosing versus deciding. And I know when I first say that many of you are going to think, well, Cari, aren’t they the same thing? You decide or you make a choice. My friends, they’re actually significantly different. And so I wanna make sure that you understand the difference because I did not understand it for a long time.
And when we decide instead of choose, we really limit what’s possible for us. I spend a lot of time talking about making empowered choices and encouraging you all to make empowered choices in your life. But what I have not spent enough time clarifying is that making a choice is very different than simply making a decision with a choice. We have unlimited possibilities. You can choose your career,
you can choose your significant other. You can choose where you live. All of the opportunities, all of the possibilities are available to you when you choose, when you decide your choices are limited. And many of us make decisions in places where we actually have opportunity to make choices. When we decide we’re looking at a situation, usually through a very binary context,
this or that, right or wrong, good or bad, there’s only one right decision. When we’re deciding, we forget that there’s actually unlimited opportunities and potentials for any decision that we’re looking to make. So in your life, where are you deciding? Are you deciding to stay in veterinary medicine or to get out of it? If it’s a decision, there’s only one or the other.
If it’s a choice, maybe it’s both the word and can come into play, you can work in veterinary medicine and to decide to or choose, I should say, you can work in veterinary medicine and choose to pursue another career. They can happen simultaneously. It doesn’t have to be one or the other. You can choose to make an investment in yourself and also save money.
You can choose to pursue a relationship and also continue to support yourself. It’s so important for us to recognize where we’ve made decisions that have limited what else is possible. Do you see where I’m trying to go here? We often look at different situations in our right, in our life as if there’s only one or the other choice. And that’s actually never true in any given moment.
When you’re sitting at a stop sign, for example, maybe you have to make a decision, do you go left or do you go right, because going straight, there’s like no road. So we look at that, we’re sitting at this T in our automobiles and we have to decide left or right. There’s only two choices there. But is that true?
No, it’s not binary. Now most traffic will choose or decide to go left or right, but actually we all have a choice. Do we go left? Do we go right? Do we back up? Do we move forward and go off the road? There are are unlimited choices in the direction that we wanna go, but if we look at that situation as if there’s only two decisions to be made left or right,
then we will never even notice the other opportunities. We do this in all kinds of areas of our lives. We do this with the way that we approach our cases and the way that we approach our work days and the career itself. We do this with the way that we interact with our finances, with the way that we interact with our own health,
our own nutrition, our own fitness. We do this with the way that we look at our relationships, our friendships all in or all out. And my friends, when we put the decisions of our lives into only a strictly binary context, we miss so much that’s available to us. Where this has the most impact is where we have the most fear.
So look at your life, look at your situation. What scares you the most? Are you scared about your finances? If so, you’re probably making decisions that limit your ability to earn and to grow the financial resources that you have. If the only opportunities that you have, the only decision you can make is to spend it or to save it. You miss on so many different ways that you can expand it.
So often the very thing that we need is the decision that when we look at it through a binary context, is the one that does not seem to be the most practical decision, the one that the world would agree with, the one that is quote unquote responsible by the opinion of the world. But if you take out the binary context, if you don’t make your decisions,
this or that, right or wrong, and you realize that you always get to choose. Choose any path that you want to take and recognize that you always have the opportunity to choose. Again. If you don’t recognize that, if you don’t know that, then you will live a very restricted type of experience, an experience that has you evaluating everything that you do through the context of being a right or wrong,
good or bad choice. Even in my example of sitting at a t in the road deciding, do I go right or do I go left? We would make that choice and then determine that it was either a good choice or a bad choice, a right choice or a wrong choice. But if instead we just realize that we get to pick, we get to choose.
We can decide whatever direction we wanna go at that stop sign. And if we make that choice and we headed in a direction that two miles down the road, we have clarity that that direction isn’t the way we want to continue to go, we are not bound to that decision. We have full opportunity to make a new choice in any given moment. So my friends,
as you’re considering the direction that your life is going, as maybe you’re looking to make some decisions for yourself, I want you to remember what I’ve said. Decision is a two way, two option situation. Choosing gives you every option available. You are programmed just like I am. We have been taught that there is just one or the other in so many situations.
And what I want to really shift for you today with this episode is to remember there are unlimited possibilities. There may be two binary, very obvious decisions in front of you, options for your decisions. But just because two, jump to the forefront does not mean only to exist because there are always more choices, more options to be had. Give yourself some time as you’re making decisions to consider that the choice you’re trying to make,
which is probably going to be between one thing and another, that there is a way that you can always have both. If both is what you want, you can both spend money and save money. You can both take time off and also enjoy your work. It’s not one or the other, it’s both. It’s always both. And it’s more than both.
You are never limited in the opportunities in front of you. We do that to ourselves. So if you’re trying to make some kind of decision and you find yourself struggling, really believing that you are gonna make or break the rest of your life with the choice that you make, I want you to remember, no, my friends, you can always choose again.
And when you look at decisions through that lens of choice, instead of through that binary lens of deciding, you will see how easy it is to make another decision whenever you want. There are no permanent decisions, my friends. You can always decide again. And what I would encourage you to do when you’re looking at the choices in front of you is to ask yourself,
which one moves me toward what I wanna create? Which one feels exciting but makes me a little bit nervous? And when you find those choices in front of you, I would encourage you to move forward in that direction because what I have learned in my lifetime so far is that the things that scare me the most are the choices that are best for me to make.
They’re the choices that have required me to grow. They’ve required me to push the limits that I felt comfortable within. They’ve required me to sometimes and often I would even say go in a slightly different direction than what people of influence, parents, teachers, friends, family, clergy, people who have led me in this lifetime may have chosen for themselves. And when I’ve done that,
when I have been brave and have chosen intentionally for myself, not just simply accepted the better of two options, but instead allowed myself to consider that there are unlimited options and the choice I make is the one that feels right for me when I have allowed myself to do that, the payoff has always been exponential. My friends, there are never two choices.
There are always unlimited choices. So if you’re getting stuck in decision, believing there is a right or wrong, good or bad, responsible or irresponsible decision to be made, I want you to remember that that is simply a lie. It is a false construct. And the truth is that you have the ability to choose any path that you want to take,
and you have the ability to make a new choice at any time when you want to. Making a new choice does not mean that you made a wrong choice in the past. It does not mean that you aren’t capable of staying the path that you’re already on. Making a new choice says to the universe and says to yourself, I’m deciding for me. I have more clarity about what’s right for my journey.
I know what’s best for me in this situation. And when you choose for yourself time and time again, everyone benefits. All right, my friends, just something to consider. I hope this episode has been helpful. See you next time. Bye for now.