You Chose This - From Raindrops to Happiness (from New Zealand)

Ever found yourself wondering, "Are the experiences unfolding in my life truly my own choices, even the negative ones?"

I found myself pondering over this very thought during my exhilarating journey in the breathtaking landscape of New Zealand. This episode is the fruition of that contemplation, a discourse on the power of choice, and our incredible ability as humans to shape our lives through our decisions.

From the mundane decision to venture out in the rain to the profound choices that shape our happiness quotient, we'll explore how every choice we make, consciously or unconsciously, weaves the tapestry of our existence.

As the 2023 curtains draw to a close and we march into the dawn of 2024, it's essential we don't let the steering wheel of our lives be dictated by external circumstances.

How about we shift gears and take control?

This episode is not just about realizing the power of choice but also about mindfully choosing happiness and living life on our own terms. Narratives from my adventurous drive through the fascinating terrains of Castle Hill are sure to offer a refreshing perspective on how even the most challenging times can lead to beautiful destinations. 

Together, let's embrace the power of choice and create a fulfilling existence for ourselves and those around us.

Watch the full video episode at Justin Wenck, Ph.D. YouTube Channel!

Check out my best-selling book "Engineered to Love: Going Beyond Success to Fulfillment" also available on Audiobook on all streaming platforms! Go to https://www.engineeredtolove.com/ to learn more!

Got a question or comment about the show? E-mail me at podcast@justinwenck.com.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:04

Welcome to the show, justin, here recording from New Zealand, christchurch to be exact. This is my last stop before I return to the US and fly out tomorrow morning back to San Francisco, and I'm staying at Double Tree, which I think this used to be a chateau it's called Chateau something and so below me is a beautiful rose garden and it is currently starting to rain, but I didn't want to, before the storm gets going too big, did want to share this beautiful view with you today. I am talking about how you chose this. You chose this. What did you choose? And I'm not just talking about this podcast, I'm talking about everything, everything in your life. You have gotten to choose, and you might be already getting a little frustrated upset, and this is actually good news. I'm going to explain how this is good news and this is actually able to empower you and give you lots of choice, because if you've been choosing, then that means all you have to do is just make another choice, right? So I'm choosing to do this while it's raining, yet I could be choosing to be inside and not allow you to see the beautiful background and feel what it's like to be here in New Zealand, which has been phenomenal.

Speaker 1: 1:28

I went to get gas because I've been running a car the last few days. I drove from Queenstown, which is like a among the most southern island of New Zealand. There's North Island, the South Island, the big ones, there's some smaller ones, but Queenstown is more on the western coast. It's not on the coast yet, it's more inland, it's a ski area and then there's some amazing river boarding which is kind of like whitewater rafting, just without the raft. You just got a board that you hold on to. That was a really cool experience. So I drove out from there and I wanted to make sure I had a car on Christchurch because I wanted to go to this really cool place called Castle Hill, which is about an hour, an hour and 15 minutes up in the mountain area away from Christchurch. That's these most spectacular, amazing limestone formations that basically jet out of the earth, making it look like castles. So what I've been finding out in New Zealand is that usually if it's got an English name, it's usually very simple, seems like, or it has something to do with the Queen or something related to the UK, or there's these really awesome Maori names which I haven't been able to get the pronunciation yet, so I'm not even going to try, but there's a really cool Maori name because it's also sacred Maori land. That's phenomenal. So make sure you're following me, justin Wake PhD, instagram, facebook, linkedin, youtube, tiktok so that you can check out those pictures and videos as soon as they end up becoming available getting up there.

Speaker 1: 3:08

And it's really interesting because I just had this urge to. I'm like I want to get going in the morning. I didn't really know I have nothing really planned other than to go to this place. That's an hour and a half plus an hour and a half away. I really didn't have anything. I've been told takes two hours max, that you're having a really long time.

Speaker 1: 3:28

But I was like I want to get up early, get breakfast, get on the road and it was it and get there and it's just beautiful. It's sunny, it's a little busy at parts, but wandering around it's such a large area that at one point there ends up being well, not at one point. There's an area where, basically, it's a little further away and most people don't like to put in the extra effort. So there are most people are where most people are and I found a spot where there weren't most people and I was able to lay down a blanket, take a little nap, do some meditation, and it just felt amazing. And then I started to get up and start to walk in. That's when it started to rain. But I was done, it was time to go and I decided to head to the beach, which was an hour and a half back towards Christchurch, a little past Christchurch get there. It's sunny, really cool, a little windy, and then I have my fill of the beach, get my feet wet, and then it starts to rain too. And now I'm coming back and I'm here at the hotel about to have some dinner, but I wanted to record this, and now it's really starting to rain and I have nowhere else to be. And so the reason I bring this up to you of a little bit of there's a little bit of.

Speaker 1: 4:53

You have some intuition, and then you also have choice and you can choose to follow that intuition or you can choose to ignore that intuition. And what's intuition? What it? It's something that's other than your normal mind chatter or the normal habitual thing. There's a thing that you usually do whenever something happens. That's not your intuition, that's your pattern, and you have choice of whether you wanna follow the pattern or you wanna do something differently. And now, going back to that, you chose this. You might be going like Justin, you're telling me that getting laid off I chose that this abusive relationship or this abuse of childhood I chose that. You're telling me that being in poverty or this illness, this cancer, this disease, whatever it is, I chose this. So there are many spiritual traditions and spiritual circles where they would even go like yes, you actually chose that.

Speaker 1: 5:51

I'm not gonna get into that, but what you have chosen is, once the thing has happened, right, so something has happened that's now in the past. In this moment, you get to choose what to do with it. So, no matter what awful, horrible thing and again, sometimes this might not be something you can do easily. In the moment, you might just need to be pissed the fuck off, or you might need to just be grieving, or you just might need to be like this is hopeless. But at some point, though, there's gonna come a point where there might be a little something of like what could I do differently now? And that's the time where you're choosing. We always get these little moments, these little points where we can go one way or the other, and often it's like we just keep going the same way over and over again, right, and when that decision point comes and you choose to do literally anything else, that means it opens up other options for your life. So, like this day, probably what I normally would have, and usually I'd wake up and I'd do like Qi Gong and I'd do some other things before I get going. But today it was just like I need to skip this and I need to get going and it ended up allowing me to have some really great experiences with great weather and I did my Qi Gong just before doing this, which is new to the show. I've talked about this maybe a couple times in other episodes Qi Gong.

Speaker 1: 7:24

Qi is life-force energy and Gong is, I believe, just practice. It's a practice for cultivating life-force energy. And what's life-force energy? It's that that makes whatever a live do with the thing that it does. So it makes a tree grow, it makes a bunny rabbit hippity hop, it makes you do human-y things, and most of the times we humans get our life-force energy just from the food we eat. Yet, just how your phone has other ways of charging besides just plugging it in. You can do wireless charging. Qi Gong is kind of like the wireless charging where you get a little extra life-force energy to help you feel more energized, overcome any ailments or whatever, and it's also great for cultivating focus.

Speaker 1: 8:11

So I did that later than I usually would have and it totally paid off.

Speaker 1: 8:16

So I had an option to do the habitual thing. Some habits are good, but then sometimes even a good habit might not be the best thing in the moment and it's starting to. Once you have chosen to get away from enough habits, you can start to ride the wave of life. Like in Christchurch and Queenstown I did this cool riverboarding thing, as I mentioned at the beginning of the show, and it's always great to have someone like because they basically tell you like you're not going to fight the river, the river is always going to win. It's basically just can you pay attention and can you work with it? And if you've kind of fucked up and you mess up, basically you're just going to have to relax. And because they're saying that there's like there's going to be some whirlpools and sometimes where you might just get sucked in. So if you don't, if you miss the turn or you don't go where we're telling you to go, but just relax, hold your breath. It's only going to be three to six seconds and then the river is going to let you go and you're going to be fine. You just don't panic. Life is like that. Ah, life is like that, where if you panic, that's just going to make a challenging time even more challenging and even more difficult to work with, whereas if you can kind of go, all right, this is happening, this isn't where I want to be, and eventually it's going to lighten up and you can then start to navigate in the direction where you want to be headed.

Speaker 1: 9:53

And a few episodes ago we were talking about your vision. This is something that you basically put in front of yourself and is like I want to focus on this. I've got to hold my tripod and the camera so that it doesn't blow away In people's minds, it doesn't cut or look, but you can actually光 on the memory. It's something you put in front of you over and over again until that just becomes your reality. So what I want to ask you is if you've listened to that show, or maybe you haven't. The thinking to your vision of life it might be. You know, there's certain people, there's certain places you're living, there's certain things you're doing.

Speaker 1: 10:27

What about feeling? If you put feeling happy, feeling joy, feeling bliss as part of your vision? Because, if not, this is something to seriously consider. You have the choice to choose what it is you would like to be feeling and go in that direction. Now, are you going to feel that way all the time? No, because we're meant to experience all the colors of the rainbow of life. Yet perhaps you've been feeling way more of other emotions and maybe it's time to start waiting a little more heavily towards joy, towards bliss, towards happiness. And if you're like I don't even know where to begin, that's where a lot of the practices I teach that's what this podcast is all about is how to get you more into that happy state or to even go beyond happy to joy and to bliss and things like that. So really encourage you to keep you know listening to this podcast. So like, subscribe, share with a friend. That does really help out and also been doing.

Speaker 1: 11:30

You know there's still three more sessions before the years up for the ideal life accelerator where, if you want to do a little one-on-one hot seat coaching with me, justinwinkcom, slash ideal life X or ideal life accelerator and also still got a couple more unlocking your ideal life master classes coming up. So these are all no cost, no cost free. So if you're like, oh there's, there's just no help out there in the world, I mean you can. You can choose to see it that way. Or you can choose to see hey, here's Justin offering some help, some guidance, some techniques or just some good times. Like I'm a pretty enjoyable guy to just spend some time with, so you just want to spend a little bit more time with me. Check out these things. So you had unlocking your ideal life masterclass. Justinwinkcom slash ideal life. So go check these out, sign up, make use.

Speaker 1: 12:22

I do want you to have a really enjoyable, amazing end of 2023 and set you up for a phenomenal 2024.

Speaker 1: 12:30

There might be other people worrying about what's going to happen, how are things going to turn out.

Speaker 1: 12:35

Yet that's that's a choice to be looking outside of you and letting that dictate your life. Or you can choose to get in the driver's seat and navigate to where you would like to go. Like you know, are you in control of the road? No, but when there ends up being that fork and you can go left or right, you can be conscious, you can be aware and you can make that decision, in deciding that, oh, I'm going to be choosing this road that leads to more happiness, more joy, and that's what I want for you, that's what I want for myself, and that's what I want for more and more of people on this beautiful earth, so that, even if it's raining and coming down, you can still be enjoying how beautiful it is. And I appreciate that things like this is what creates the flowers, the beauty, the other things that sometimes you need a little little chill, a little wind, a little rain, so then the sun can come out and it can be appreciated and enjoyed. So that I'm going to go get warmed up. Thank you and good day.