Life is a Series of Choice Points

“I want to be more intentional”

“I need to slow down”

“I’m burned out”

“I feel out of control”

I hear statements like this pretty often in my therapy office lately. To be totally honest I think them myself too! Modern life is very busy, and it’s easy to get swept away by all of our responsibilities and start feeling like we’re just going through the motions — not truly engaging with the present moment. I think there are many reasons for this including “hustle culture,” which prioritizes productivity, ambition, and success, over balance and self care. On top of work, we are also usually juggling many other roles, and responsibilities which make it difficult to live the “slow” lifestyle that many are beginning to crave.

Living life “going through the motions” is essentially living on autopilot — we’re not truly present. We might be doing one thing, but our minds are somewhere else, either in the past or the future. This pulls us out of the present and leaves us feeling drained and out of control. Then we turn to things to cope with the stress and fatigue that ultimately have more consequences than benefits. “Doom scrolling” is a common example of this. Ever pick up your phone and start scrolling only to eventually realize an hour has passed you by and now you just feel guilty and more drained for spending all that time on the phone? It happens.

But what if I told you that each moment offers us a choice? And that by increasing our awareness of our thoughts, emotions, and urges, we can step out of autopilot and start living with more intention? Living in line with what matters to us?

This is where the concept of "choice points" from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) comes in. I like to view life as being a series of choice points—small moments where we have the opportunity to decide how we respond, who we want to be, and what direction we want to take.

Values and Acceptance

I won’t get into explaining the entire ACT model here, but I think it’s important to note a few things. One of the main focuses of ACT involves exploring and identifying values. Values reflect what matters most to you. They describe the kind of person that you want to be. For example, you might value honesty, patience, creativity, kindness, and compassion. You might also value things like self care, stability, personal growth, and learning. Why is this important? Because values guide our decisions and shape our lives. If we’re not clear on what’s important to us then it’s a challenge to know what a meaningful life looks like, and how to choose behaviors that move us towards the life we want to live.

Another main focus in ACT is practicing acceptance of thoughts, emotions, and other challenging inner experiences such as memories, physical sensations, and urges. In ACT, we work to stop struggling with these difficult experiences, and instead, learn to allow them to be there while we engage with our values. We don’t argue with or actively avoid these inner experiences. We learn that we don’t have to wait for these challenges to disappear before we can start living meaningful lives (spoiler alert, they won’t completely disappear!)

The Choice Point as a tool for intentional living

The choice point was created by Dr. Russ Harris, an ACT practitioner and trainer (side note if all this stuff is of interest to you I highly recommend reading his book, The Happiness Trap). The goal of the choice point is to help us recognize moments in our lives where we can make intentional decisions that align with our values, rather than reacting automatically (switching off autopilot).

Basically, as we go through life, we’ll be faced with a lot of choices — these come to us in the form of situations, thoughts, and emotions. Whatever the situation, thought or feeling is, that’s what goes on the bottom of the choice point. It’s what we’re making a choice in response to.

Then we realize we actually have a choice — we can make a “towards move” or an “away move.” When we say towards and away, we’re referring to moving towards or away from our values. Towards or away from the life we want to live. Towards or away from the kind of person that we want to be. Let’s bring this to life with an example.

Imagine you’re at work, staring at a never ending to do list. Emails are piling up, you have multiple meetings, and projects are all demanding your attention. The stress and anxiety increase, and you feel yourself getting overwhelmed. Here’s how to map out the choice point in this situation:

1. The Situation (Bottom of the Choice Point):

   • You’re feeling completely overworked. Your thoughts are racing, and you have no idea where to start. Everything feels urgent.

2. The Choice:

   • Away Move (Auto-pilot Reaction): You might check your phone or browse social media, in an attempt to avoid the stress for a while. This might give you temporary relief, but it doesn’t solve anything. It’s a way of avoiding the discomfort of feeling overwhelmed, but it only leaves you feeling more stressed later on.

   • Towards Move (Intentional Decision): You take a step back, and break things down into smaller tasks. You could prioritize what needs to be done first, ask for help if necessary, and focus on one thing at a time. This response is grounded in values like responsibility, growth, efficiency, and patience. It helps you regain control and make progress, even when things feel chaotic.

3. Result:

   • If you go with the "away move," you’ll get a temporary escape, but the tasks will still be there, and the overwhelm will only grow as you continue to avoid. You might find yourself even more stressed by the end of the day, knowing you’ve avoided the situation, and that you haven’t acted in line with your values.

   • If you choose the "towards move," it might not feel like an instant fix (it won’t magically make the anxiety disappear!), but it’s a choice that aligns with how you want to show up in your work. By breaking things down and taking small steps forward, you’re not just making progress on your to-do list — you’re also building confidence and feeling good about showing up in the world in a way that is consistent with your values.

You can use the choice point to help with intentional decision making for a variety of situations. The example above is more task focused and you can do this for any similar situation — the “towards move” will be the task you’re trying to complete, and the “away move” will be any other things you’re tempted to do to avoid or procrastinate. Other ways to use a choice point include navigating challenging emotions, responding to conflict, and making decisions.

Remember, “away moves” are not synonymous with “bad” and “towards moves” are not synonymous with “good.” More accurate labels would be “effective” and “ineffective” at moving your towards what matters, and towards the kind of person you want to be. For example, in the situation illustrated above, “go socialize with my coworkers” would be considered an “away move.” Not because socializing is bad, but because it’s not effective moving you towards what’s important in that specific situation. Context matters!

Lastly, everyone engages in “away moves” at times. We’re all human. We don’t like to feel uncomfortable and we’re good at finding ways to avoid discomfort and pain. The main take away though is that we all have choices. The choices are just difficult to see at times because we function on autopilot so often.

Here’s a simple step by step process to help you start integrating choice points into your life:

1. Identify your values - you can use the list here as a starting point!

2. Start practicing mindfulness - bring more awareness to your thoughts, emotions, urges, and sensations throughout the day. Check in with yourself a couple times per day and consider journaling what you notice. What emotions often come up? How do those show up in your body? What are common thoughts that you notice? How do these things impact your behavior?

3. Notice and label your choice points as they come up — then map out your choice points. In the beginning it may be most helpful to actually write them out. You can easily draw a choice point by hand, or print a reference like this one. After a while, it will become easier to start thinking through choice points in your head.

Viewing life as a series of choice points helps us to see that we do have more control than we realize — at least over our own actions. It just takes a lot more effort.

One of my favorite exercises to use to illustrate this point to my clients is this —

Do you best to do the exercise without looking ahead. I know it’s hard, but try haha.

Line up four sticky notes side by side

On three of them draw a circle

I’m going to make four predictions about your circles now — they are all around the same place on the sticky note, they’re all around the same size, they all have the same starting point, and you drew them all in the same direction.

Am I right? How do I know this? — because you drew the circles on autopilot.

So now, on your fourth sticky note, draw a circle but this time make all of the choices you didn’t make when drawing the first three circles.

Choose its placement on the paper

Choose how big it is

Choose its starting point

Choose the direction it’s drawn in

How did that feel? I’ll bet it required a lot more attention and effort and may have even felt a bit strange. You probably didn’t even realize that you had that many choices available to you when it comes to drawing a circle.

So the experience in drawing that fourth circle? That’s what it’s like to begin using choice points. To bring mindful awareness to our behavior and act in line with what matters to us even when it’s more difficult to do so.

Sending compassion your way,

Deanna

This post was originally published on my Substack, Cultivating You