I had a dream the other night. I can’t tell you what it was about. I don’t remember. The only memory I have is knowing, for certain, the message that my dream was giving me. As I awoke, one thought was clear in my mind – “In every moment, there is a choice.”

I’m not sure why this was the message I received, but it is what I was given. “In every moment, there is a choice.”

I teach this in my day job – in my consulting and coaching work. I guide clients to be in choice and to make active, conscious decisions as they move through their days. To be aware that even no choice is a choice, and no action is an action. Am I not doing the same? Are there ways that I can be more deliberate, more purposeful?

It is so easy to go on autopilot. To move through the day unconsciously. To make choices I’m not aware I’m choosing, and decisions I’m not aware I’m deciding. What would it be like if I took each moment, or at least more moments, and made active, conscious choices? In each moment – to intentionally choose what I’m next going to do, or how I’m going to interact with someone, or what I’m going to spend my mind and energy thinking about, or how I’m going to feel? I think my days would be better.

I called my mother this afternoon to share with her a nasty, yet funny, “monkey-brain” thought that was playing in my mind. I was making up a wild story about negative consequences of something I hadn’t done. Even I knew my thoughts were preposterous. Yet I could feel my mind leaning towards it, and I saw the choice I could make. I could choose to think my nasty, self-defeating thought, or I could choose to call it out and think, actively choose to think, something else.

I interact with people all day long. My family. My friends. My business partner. My clients. How often do I think carefully and consciously through my moments of interaction? How often do I choose, deliberately and mindfully, how I want to show up and what I want to share? How I want to connect? Probably more often with clients than anyone else, but maybe not all the time then either. And maybe my day would be sweeter, my life would be sweeter, if I remembered to make a choice about how I connected with someone in every moment that I did.

At this very moment I’m tired. And I have a choice what I will do about that. I can push myself to get more done, like I often do (or at least used to do). Or I can give myself the gift of a cup of tea and a book on the couch. In this moment, I have a choice.

“In every moment, there is a choice.” It is the message – the gift – that I was given. Let me remember it every now and then.