Have you ever noticed that life frequently serves, usually when we are least prepared, opportunities to make life-altering choices. Do I stay at this dead end, but secure job, or take a chance with a new risky opportunity? Do I step out into a new relationship, or cling to the comfort of mom and dad’s basement? Do I tenaciously adhere to speaking only truth, even if brutal, or do I take the easy road of a barely off-white but much more socially acceptable lie? Choices, big and small, seem to greet our every step. Often, there is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ response, but there certainly are a variety of consequences to consider.

Fortunately, our culture provides us with three exemplary icons that embody the very essence of our most popular choosing and acting styles. I call them the ‘three great captains’ of Western civilization: Captain Kirk, Captain Crunch, and Captain Kangaroo.

If you are prone to be a testosterone-based bull in the china shop, then you follow the way of Captain Kirk. Using this strategy you will employ significantly more ‘leap-age’ than you will ‘look-age’. Crank up the adrenalin, and storm the Klingon stronghold armed with a drained phaser and a keen dramatic presence. The way of Kirk leaves logic (Spock) and emotional sensitivity (McCoy) back on the ship’s control bridge ineffectively squabbling.

If you are more into less thinking and more wishing and hoping, then you are an adherent of the second great captain’s philosophy of action that of the good Captain Crunch. Champion of the cereal box, most of Crunch’s battles were staged on the stormy skimmed milk seas of the cereal bowl. One step below the proverbial tempest in the teapot, Capt. Crunch bested bare footed pirates by hoping to violate the common laws of physics and milk absorption. The followers of the Crunchian Way don’t spend much time thinking, rather they have faith that when push and shove finally meet, somehow, some transcendental way, things will just work out. Often you will find them repeating affirmations, praying, or having a second cocktail after lobbying the fates to be gentle with them.

Finally we consider the last of the great Captains of our culture: Captain Kangaroo. This Captain chose his actions by committee. Capt. Kangaroo always consulted his team of stalwart puppets and staff. Only after painstaking analysis by Mr.’s Moose and Greenjeans, Bunny Rabbit, Dancing Bear, and a host of others was Capt. Kangaroo ready to take action. Unfortunately, by then his show was over, and his opportunity missed.

Obviously, depending on the hyperbolic traits of any single one of our great captains, or any single habitual strategy for making choices, is liable to routinely leave us enjoying less than desirable consequences. Some situations might require the ‘charge in phaser’s blazing’ approach of Kirk. Other situations may well benefit from the soggy thinking optimism of Crunch. Of course, the careful analytical approach of Kangaroo has its moments as well. Most situations would benefit from a nice variable combination of the three captain’s choosing methods.

Before you make your next big, or little choice, you might stop for a moment and see if you have been happy with the results from previous similar choices. If you have, then by all means move forwards as usual. If you haven’t always been pleased with the results of your choices, you might consider changing your choosing strategy. Sometimes that’s as easy as simply making up your mind to change. Other times our choosing strategy is completely unconscious, and not easily changed. If you chronically find yourself at the wrong end of bad choices that you don’t even remember making, then it’s time to visit your local hypnotherapist. Hypnosis is the fastest way to unearth unconscious mechanisms, and free you from their grip. A qualified hypnotherapist can help you reprogram faulty decision habits and help you start moving in the direction you want to go. With all due respect to the three great captains, it is your life, and you deserve to sail through it smiling.

This is another helpful mind management tip from Richard Lefever and the brain weavers at Quit! Check us out at http://www.quitsmokingoregon.com