Imagine You Chose That

Imagine You Chose That

I recently came across a mindset associated with Navy SEAL training that stayed with me:

It's about "I chose this"...

SEAL candidates voluntarily enter an extraordinarily demanding training environment. During Hell Week, they are exposed to prolonged physical strain, cold, exhaustion and very little sleep. The training is designed not only to test physical ability, but the depth of a candidate’s desire to continue.

When the pain becomes intense, the mind naturally begins to protest:

Why is this happening?

I cannot take this anymore!

This is too much!

But then the candidate remembers: Nobody accidentally placed me here. I applied. I prepared. I walked through the gate.

I chose this means...

That sentence does not remove the cold or make the body hurt less. It changes the position from which the experience is met. Instead of being the powerless victim of an unwanted situation, the person becomes an active participant in a challenge they deliberately accepted.

And this made me wonder:

What would happen if we brought the same perspective into our own lives?

A Different Question

Normally, when something painful happens, we ask:

Why did this happen to me?

It is an understandable question. But it often places us in a position of helplessness. Something outside us has acted, and we have been condemned to endure the consequences.

Our attention becomes absorbed by everything that should have happened differently.

Our parents should have understood us better. A relationship should not have ended.

Our body should not have developed this problem.

These statements can be completely valid. Something genuinely painful may have happened. People may have failed us. There may be consequences that still need to be addressed.

But like Mother Teresa stated: "I know God will not give me anything I can't handle. I just wish that He didn't trust me so much". Meaning to understand it from a merely human perspective is sometimes almost impossible - especially when adversity and inflicted pain and trauma become humanly unbearable. So I don't want to dismiss these horrifying things! I just want to offer a different perspective that might be useful for some people.

So what happens when we temporarily ask a radically different question?

Imagine you chose that!

Not necessarily your human personality. Not the everyday version of you that prefers comfort, safety and predictability.

Imagine that something deeper chose it - Imagine your soul chose the circumstances of your life.

A Thought Experiment

I am not suggesting that we can prove that our souls select every event before we are born.

This is a thought experiment. You do not have to turn it into a spiritual doctrine. You only have to enter it sincerely enough to discover what it reveals.

Imagine that your soul is an intelligent being with a much wider perspective than your human mind. Your personality sees a small part of life. It knows what happened yesterday, what it wants today and what it fears might happen tomorrow. The soul, in this thought experiment, sees the larger landscape.

It is deeply connected to the whole. It understands relationships between events that appear separate to us. It may care less about remaining comfortable and more about experiencing life fully. (if you want to go deeper into how the soul and our human nature are connected, you can read my post "One Foot in the Eternal, One Foot in the Human").

From that perspective, your soul may not be a timid guardian trying to protect you from every difficulty.

It may be fierce!

Perhaps it wants to encounter the full range of human experience. Perhaps it values depth more than convenience. Perhaps it understands that certain capacities can only emerge through meeting something that initially appears unbearable.

Imagine that this soul chose your family, your body and the people whose paths crossed yours.

Imagine that it also chose the obstacles - what would change?

From “Why Me?” to “What For?”

When we believe an experience was imposed on us without meaning, our attention naturally searches for someone or something to blame.

When we imagine that we chose it, the mind begins looking for purpose.

Why would I have chosen this?

What has this experience taught me?

What became possible because I went through it?

The mind is remarkably skilled at finding evidence for the position from which we ask.

When I say, “This should never have happened,” I will find evidence that my life has been damaged!

When I say, “Imagine I chose this,” I begin to notice what the experience developed within me.

I might recognize that rejection forced me to discover my own path. A period of confusion may have taught me to question what I previously accepted as truth. A physical limitation may have brought me into a more intimate relationship with my body.

This does not turn pain into something pleasant - It gives pain a direction.

That's why one of Dr. Phil Stutz "tools" (reversal of desire) contains the phrase: "Pain, come here, you make me free!"

Choice Changes Your Relationship With Reality

Resistance does not only mean disliking what happened. Resistance is the attempt to avoid fully meeting it.

We push the experience away. We bury the emotion beneath explanations. We distract ourselves so that we do not have to look directly at what hurts. But what we refuse to meet does not disappear. It continues to shape our decisions from beneath the surface.

The sentence “I chose this” interrupts that movement.

When I choose something, I turn toward it. I become willing to see what is actually here. I stop spending all my energy arguing with reality and begin using that energy to understand it.

Choosing an experience does not mean that I enjoyed it. It does not mean that I want it to happen again. It means that I am no longer abandoning myself in the middle of what happened.

I am willing to stand beside the person I was, feel what they felt and listen to what the experience still wants to show me.

it shifts my internal focus from being the victim to being the observing and creative chooser!

Acceptance Is Not Approval

This perspective has to be handled carefully!

Saying “Imagine you chose that” must never become a way of blaming people for their suffering.

It should never be imposed on someone else. Telling another person that their soul chose their trauma can be dismissive and cruel. It can bypass grief, anger and the need for accountability.

This thought experiment is only valuable when a person freely chooses to explore it for themselves.

It also does not mean remaining in a harmful situation!

Acceptance means acknowledging that something is happening. Approval means deciding that it is good or should continue. These aretwo completely different things.

You can fully accept the reality of a destructive relationship and choose to leave it. You can accept that someone harmed you and still hold them responsible. You can accept the past without pretending that it was fair.

The purpose of this perspective is not to excuse what happened - It is to reclaim your relationship with it.

Looking Back Through the Eyes of the Soul

Choose one difficult period from your past. Do not begin with the most overwhelming experience of your life. Begin with something you can approach without losing contact with the present.

Look back at that situation and say quietly:

1. I Imagine I chose ...

   1. Then notice what happens.

   2. There may initially be resistance. A part of you may respond,

      “I would never have chosen that!”

   3. Let that response exist.

2. Then clarify the experiment:

   1. “My human personality would not have chosen it. But imagine that a wiser part of me did.”

   
   

3. Now ask:

   1. Why would my soul have chosen this experience?

   2. Do not force an inspiring answer. Allow your attention to move through the experience slowly.

   3. You may begin to see qualities you developed, directions your life took or truths you could no longer avoid.

   4. The meaning may not be that the event itself was good. The meaning may be found in what you created from it. explore that.

Three Steps for Working With This Perspective

When you encounter a difficult memory or present challenge, move through these three steps:

1. Acknowledge what happened

Describe the situation honestly. Do not make it smaller, more spiritual or more acceptable than it was.

2. Imagine that you chose it

Temporarily step into the perspective of a soul that sees more than your personality can currently understand.

3. Ask what the choice made possible

Look for the capacity, insight or direction that emerged through meeting the experience. This is not about producing a perfect explanation. It is about changing your orientation from powerlessness to participation to "I am a powerful creative chooser of circumstances and ways to create and grow with and through life".

The Freedom of Choosing What Is Already Here

We cannot return to the past and choose whether an event occurred. But we can choose our relationship with it now.

That is where freedom begins.

As long as I remain entirely identified as the victim of my history, my past continues to determine who I am allowed to become. The moment I say, “Imagine I chose this,” a space opens.

I am no longer only the person to whom something happened. I am also the consciousness capable of meeting it, understanding it and deciding what it will become within me.

The experience may remain painful. But it is no longer meaningless. Perhaps your soul did choose every detail of your life. Perhaps it did not. The thought experiment does not require certainty.

It only asks you to consider that beneath the part of you that feels overwhelmed, there may be another perspective - one that knew you were strong enough to walk this path.

Not because every hardship was good.

Not because suffering should be glorified.

But because even here, in the life you have already lived, you can stop turning away.

You can face what happened. You can meet it completely. And you can say:

Imagine I chose that!