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From: woods@hao.UUCP (Greg Woods)
Newsgroups: net.singles
Subject: Re: Accolade for Ms Julie Hoff
Message-ID: <1673@hao.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 5-Aug-85 16:06:54 EDT
Article-I.D.: hao.1673
Posted: Mon Aug  5 16:06:54 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 7-Aug-85 01:03:16 EDT
References: <750@ihuxa.UUCP> <425@sdchema.sdchema.UUCP> <1333@uwmacc.UUCP>
Organization: High Altitude Obs./NCAR, Boulder CO
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>    Seems to me some people are confused here (yup, it might even be me).  The 
> word "choice" means that I decide what I feel.  Period.  

  This is not the sense in which *I* use the word "choice", and I don't believe
this is what Julie meant by it either. A "choice" does not have to be a
conscious decision. "Choice" is a broader concept than "decision". A "decision"
is a choice made in the conscious mind, but many of the choices we make are
unconscious (some people have used the term "hard-wired"). The point of all
this discussion that I have been trying to make is that if you are *aware*
of what reactions you have "hard-wired" in, you *can* choose *consciously*
(i.e. decide) to react in a different way than the "hard-wired" reaction.
If you do this enough times, the "hard-wired" reaction changes or goes away,
allowing you to be more spontaneous in your reactions and to experience things
to the fullest. An example: I *hate* getting stuck in traffic. The old "hard-
wired" reaction was to get pissed off at the traffic. A little thought shows
this to be a worse than useless reaction, since it does not make the problem
go away and results in an unpleasant experience of the situation. What
I started doing was noticing the hard-wired reaction starting, and *choosing*
not to react that way. Instead, I could say "well, there's 10 more minutes
to listen to this hot tape I'm playing". After catching myself this way
enough times, I no longer have such a strong tendency to get pissed off
at traffic jams. No, it is not 100% effective. But when you're dealing with
human beings, what is? Yes, I still occasionally get pissed off at traffic
jams (especially on my recent trips to southern California! :-), but that
reaction happens seldom now and I am able to catch it most of the time when
it does. The result: my experience of driving is many times more pleasant
than it was before I became aware of being at choice about how I react
to things.

--Greg