This past week, my first son, Kenechi turned 21. I don’t even think I know when the years flew by and suddenly, my baby is 21. More than his age, I am so proud of the man he has become and is becoming. I remember saying to someone, “he is such a proper child”…..

When I looked to those years when he was growing up though, I can see a long list of events and reactions that have led up to where we are today. I definitely cannot take the glory for how my children are turning out; God had KK from day 1 of his life. But I can say a considerable part of it all is a result of the choices my husband and I have made (or didn’t make) through the years.

Life is shaped by the choices we make and as parents, how we choose to raise our children plays a huge part in who they become.  I still have scars to prove my mother’s choice to parent me ‘hard’ and today I am grateful she didn’t play the weak woman card, she stood and fought for me how best she knew how.  My growing up stories, however, are for another day!

What I have now is an opportunity to look back and be grateful that some of the choices I made turned out right for that phase of my life under my mother’s guidance, with the hope of making better ones going forward.

The thing about choices is that while they often appear to us as one-off happenings, they have roots that quietly spread unnoticed and cling to those who are connected to us, causing them to reap of its fruit (good or bad). In reality, while they are ours to make, their outcomes are never entirely ours; and many times, a chain of events is set in motion with one choice made.

There are two ways to see this; the my-choices-can-affect-my-future-so-I-have-to-be-careful angle or the I-can-create-a-specific-kind-of-future-I-want-with-the-choices-I-make-perspective. One is reactive; the other is deliberate. I choose the latter.

Beyond raising children, imagine that you get to decide almost every detail of your foreseeable future just by making certain deliberate and specific choices. In his book, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey explained it as Beginning with the end in Mind.

Like currency, your choices are your exchange for what the future will deliver to you. You should not allow yourself to think of them as ordinary or random. Nothing is random or ordinary. Everything has its peculiar function; some just do not show their results immediately.

Something interesting is that it matters from the simple choice of what to eat or wear to the complicated ones like who to marry or what country to live in, everything speaks to the future you will have.

My question is, do your current choices project you as a king in the future or a beggar? Are you making decisions based on what your account reads or based on the future you see? Will you exchange fame for dignity or mediocrity for excellence while hoping to do better tomorrow?

Tomorrow will only suck you in deeper because it’s a processed version of today’s actions.  As I watched KK balance his accounts and report to my hubby and me how he had kept up with their utility bills, rent and such like, I said to myself, we helped shape this, and for that, I will forever be grateful!

In the end, everything that you project, you must create today, with DELIBERATE choices. Otherwise, what other choice do you have?

Embrace Your Super Power!

Bidemi