The Choices We Make: Having Meaning in Life and Understanding Choice Theory

By Robert "Sinti" Maahs

Book

Prisons in our country are dark places that can either transform a person into a monster or even a healer of the hurt and damaged, who live behind the high walls topped with razor wire and gun towers.

It has been many years since I underwent my own personal transformation. It was a time when I often struggled finding workshops, or even materials to help me turn my life around. I made myself a promise to find some way to help others holding on to hope, not to struggle to find what they needed to make change happen in their own lives in the best way I could. Prison life can suck the hope from your soul if you let it.

See, a long 38 years ago, I made a choice that was not only wrong, but also cost a person his life unnecessarily, and me the last 38 years of my own life locked away in a California prison. I live with this shame and regret every day, committed to being a better person, worthy of redemption.

I was looking at life in prison, and I knew I could not continue to life a life of chaos, even though I lived in an environment full of chaos. Something had to change. It started with me.

I watched many in prison struggle with their own process of changing, just as I had. Education gave rise to a field of knowledge that helped me understand how and why we make the choices we make. I wanted to reach out to the many that ask themselves this very question; “why do I make the choices I make?”

In prison it is well understood that hurt people hurt others, while healed people heal others. I owe a debt that can never be repaid in full, yet. I know I must try. I owe this to those whose lives I have impacted by my past choices. Everyday, I do what I can to make a positive impact in the lives of others, whether through teach, writing books and designing programs, or simple conversation. It is no longer about me. It is about others who may be struggling in their journey through life.

I found that when we have no understanding of our place in the world, or meaning in life, we struggle. We make faulty choices and we can make some mistakes in life’s journey that are very costly. Understanding Choice Theory can help us find some answers we need to turn it all around.

I felt it was important to have a body of knowledge available to help all those who struggle in their own search for answers; another tool in your cognitive tool box to help you make your transformational process a reality, so that you can live your best possible life regardless of your situation.

Take a moment and learn a little about how we can find that; “meaning in life’s journey,” while putting “Choice Theory” to work in our own life.

You do not have to struggle to meet your needs in life. However, you do have to understand that your choices have consequences and affect more than just you.

Why Buy?

We live in times of great question and unrest. Societies around the world are asking themselves; “what is the meaning of my existence in life?” and “what choices do I have in my current journey through life?”

While we struggle to satisfy those questions in a meaningful way, we are pressed with some hardcore challenges filled with chaotic messaging on what the future holds.

We can only control how we choose to respond to any given situation by the attitude we take in life. Choice theory gives us a look into how we make the choices we make. If you want better outcomes in your life, understanding the Dynamics of Choice Theory can help you be your best possible self.

Pickup the book and put some new tools into your cognitive toolbox. You have more to gain than you have to lose than you will ever know.

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Aug 12, 2021
• ISBN: 9781638147114

Book preview

Chapter 1

Does Life Just Happen for Us?

Every day, I come to work and go about my business of helping other inmates—with a smile upon my face—excited about the new day. See, I am a California prisoner that has been locked up for the better part of four decades now. Yes, I am a life-term prisoner. I have been to many of the state’s multitude of prisons, seeing good programs that help inmates to turn their lives around, and I have been to many prisons that have very little to offer the inmates under their care to turn it all around.

From time to time, I am asked questions such as, How do you always seem to be happy to be at work every day and give all these guys your time and energy without being callous after being locked down so long in these places? While others who have come to know a little about me and find out that I have been locked away in California’s prisons for over thirty-six years now and counting may ask, Aren’t you tired of doing all this time yet? If I had your job, I would just be kicking back, not busting a grape to help these staff look good. Then there are those few that ask, How do you manage to stay positive with all this misery around you? My answer to them all is basically the same. I see myself helping inmates turn their lives around through education. I do my part to build a better community through providing them someone willing to give them the time of day, first and second, show them that through education, you can give yourself other options than the ones you have grown to know. See, I believe that everyone has redeemable qualities that have been suppressed for a variety of reasons, and just maybe, these new options will give that someone in search of a better life, the second chance they need to turn their life around. Do you want to know what the by-product of this is for me? I look at my life and work as giving meaning and purpose to my existence in a place full of misery and despair. I also believe that everybody has redeemable qualities, and if given the opportunity, these qualities can rise to the surface.

I once read in a book by Viktor Frankl, a man that was once locked away during World War Two in a Nazi Prison Camp:

What threatens contemporary man is the alleged meaninglessness of his life, or, as I call it, the existential vacuum within him. And when does this vacuum open up, when does this so often latent vacuum become manifest? In the state of boredom.

No matter what our opinions might be about the stature of any career, job, or profession, it is the person doing the job that gives the job meaning. See, I view my work not as just work but taking the attitude that I serve a higher purpose through how I choose to approach those areas within my environment with the way I perceive everything within my environment.

I have watched over the many decades of incarceration, inmates, and staff going through the mundane routines of everyday life, simply serving their own best interest without any thought or consideration of looking beyond simply meeting their own needs. Of course, there are those few that have come to a sense of self-enlighten, understanding that service to others brings about a sense of redemption at the personal level. Just the understanding that someone doing all day long in a prison cell with only their thoughts to keep them company can be a bit overwhelming for some. However, if a person comes to understand how their choices in life were based upon how their perceived things in their worldview and managed to make a critical error in thinking, thus, leading to a prison cell, one may be lucky enough to come to terms with themselves in a very profound way.

One of the ways we do this is simply rejecting the reality of our situation and all our hidden truths that we had managed to bury deep inside some dark place. Another way we do this is by facing our ugly self in the mirror of life, then telling ourselves, I cannot continue to live my life like this, and I must choose another way to live. If you have taken the second choice, you have made the first move on understanding that the real work in the change process is about to begin.

So where does one begin in a place full of psychosocial dynamical drama? Where we once had no real meaning in our lives, we begin to think about what is most important to us. We begin to start caring about our self in a different way. We also understand that before we can care about anything or anyone else in a healthy way, we must care about our self in a healthy way. We must find a way to think beyond our petty self and focus on our evolutionary change into a person worthy of all that we have dreamed of in our lives.

I am convinced that, in the final analysis, there is no situation that does not contain within it the seed of a meaning.

Why is it that some people experience their work—even mundane work—with passion and commitment? Why do some people have an easier time dealing with complex and challenging situations at both work and in their life? Why do some people deal more easily with change? Why do some people find meaning and fulfillment in their work and everyday life while others do not? These may be complex questions with no simple answers; however, there are meaningful answers. Maybe, just the idea of illuminating our search for meaning can be the beginning of the pathway in both our work and in our lives.

Finding True Freedom

We are, by nature, creatures of habit. We are in constant search of a life that is both predictable and within our comfort zone. We rely on routine and, for the most part, learned thinking and behavioral patterns. In effect, we constantly create new pathways in our minds for dealing with things in much the same way that a path is beaten through the grass in a field from repeated use and travel. Because these patterns are automatic, we may believe these habitual ways of thinking and behaving are beyond our personal control. Life, it seems, just happens to us. Not only do we justify and rationalize our responses to life, but also, we fall prey to forces that limit our potential as human beings.

When we view ourselves as relatively powerless and driven by our instincts, the possibility that we create, or at least cocreate, our own reality becomes difficult to get a hold on. Instead, we lock ourselves inside our own mental prisons. We lose sight of our own natural potential, as well as that of others.

Each of us has his own inner concentration camp…we must deal with, with forgiveness and patience-as full human beings; as we are and what we will become. (Frankl)

The ways in which we hold ourselves prisoners of our thinking is not an easy concept to consider when we are in some prison cell staring at four walls every day.

We erect and build a prison, and the tragedy is that we cannot even see the walls of this prison. (Deepak Chopra)

However, all is not lost! We can reshape our patterns of thinking. Through our own search for meaning, we can unfreeze ourselves from our limited perspectives, find the key, and unlock the door of our metaphorical prison cell.

Frankl talked about the suffering he endured during his confinement in the Nazi camps. He was quick to point out the following: Traumatic suffering is not a prerequisite for finding meaning in our lives. He means that whenever we suffer, no matter what the severity of our suffering is, we have the ability to find meaning in the situation. Choosing to do so is the path to a meaningful life.

For a moment, I want you to think about these seven core principles that have been derived from Frankl’s work:

We are free to choose our attitude toward everything that happens to us.

We are all free to choose our attitude toward everything that happens to us. This concept is best described by Frankl’s famous quotation in his book: Everything can be taken from a man but…the last of the human freedoms, to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s way.

We can realize our will to meaning by making a conscious, authentic commitment to meaningful values and goals.

In logotherapy, it states, Considers man as a being whose main concern consists of fulfilling a meaning and in actualizing values, rather than in the mere gratification and satisfaction of drives and instincts. Rather than simply completing tasks to receive rewards such as money, influence, status, or prestige, we can realize our will to deeper meaning by making a conscious, authentic commitment to meaningful values and