Jennifer Davidson, Reality Check Coaching, based in Portland, Oregon, offers leadership for your career & life goals

The Choice Diagram shown in The Anatomy of Peace has profoundly impacted me today. It was the simplicity of the initial human urge that struck me. For those who aren’t familiar with this book the two important things for you to know are: 1) It discusses the difference between people who have a heart at peace vs. a heart at war. 2) When your heart is at peace you see others as people and when your heart is at war you see them as objects or obstacles in your way.

The first step in The Choice Diagram is our own Sense/Desire to do something. Then we make a choice to either honor the sense or betray the sense. Here’s the image on page 89:

A couple examples from The Anatomy of Peace:

• You drop something on the floor while preparing food and you have the sense to pick it up, but instead just nudge it under the cabinet with your foot. (It seems silly and yet I have totally done this before.)
• You see someone trip and their personal belongings fly all over. You have the sense to help, but instead turn around and look the other way as if you didn’t see them fall.

At the exact time I began reading about The Choice Diagram a family came and sat near my table at the coffee shop. They were pretty chatty and so in order to drown them out I put on my iPod. The next thing you know they are taking pictures. So, now I’m competing with flashes to keep my attention on the book. I’m feeling irritated at this point and they get up and start moving around. I can’t focus! I glance up and notice they are trying to take a family photo. The only problem is that one of them, the mom in this case, is taking the picture. I thought to myself “I should offer to take the picture for her so she can be included with everyone.” Instead, I ignored that thought and carried on with my reading.

I wondered afterwards WHY? Why did I hold back on my desire to help when it was the right thing to do? Luckily for me the book pointed out that this is a form of self-betrayal. At that point I justified my actions by reminding myself how annoying and disruptive they were. And to be totally honest, it made me feel better for about 1 minute. I closed the chapter and wrote on the receipt I’ve been using as a bookmark: “What if I chose to act on every sense of what’s right in each moment?”

That is my challenge for the next week. To act on every sense of what’s right in each moment and notice what happens. I challenge you to do the same and report back anything you notice or learn from the experiment.

Link to purchase The Anatomy of Peace