A Wise Meditation on the Freedom to Choose

Choices: 5 Steps for Life by Richard Dugan

Richard Dugan’s Choices: 5 Steps for Life is written over the span of nearly three decades. There are early passages from the 1990s woven alongside reflections from the 2000s and beyond. This personal guide to intentional living is one of those rare works that feels less like reading and more like sitting across from a wise, warm-hearted friend who wants nothing more than to see you flourish.

At its heart, Choices is built on a deceptively simple but liberating premise: no matter where you are in life, no matter how hemmed in you may feel by circumstance, you always have choices. And crucially, the most important choices are often the ones you don’t yet know exist.

Dismantling Fear and Limitation

Dugan draws on his own remarkable life to illustrate his philosophy. A legally blind man who built a career in radio broadcasting, he dismantles the myth of “can’t” with lived proof. The fear-based messages handed down through families, schools and institutions, such as “you’re too this” or “you don’t have what it takes,” are a chorus that so many of us internalized in childhood and are examined with compassion and then systematically dismantled. His acronym for fear (False Evidence Appearing Real) is simple, but the stories surrounding it are rich and convincing enough to make it stick.

What makes the book especially compelling is its emotional honesty. Dugan doesn’t shy away from vulnerability. He recounts asking his wife, Amrita, following her cancer diagnosis and surgery, whether she wanted to live or die. This question was not cruel but courageous, born of love and the belief that even in the darkest corridors of life, agency matters. That scene captures the book’s essential spirit: the idea that choice is not a luxury reserved for easy times but a lifeline available in every moment.

Expanding Awareness and Reclaiming Joy

The book’s philosophical underpinnings are warm as Dugan draws on spiritual wisdom from multiple traditions. He references scripture, ancient teachings and the “still small voice” of intuition without ever becoming dogmatic. His concept of the creator as a loving friend rather than a demanding authority is refreshingly gentle, and his message that we are entitled to joy, peace and love as children of that creator carries comfort.

His extended metaphor of walking a foggy road — following the painted white line you’ve always been told to follow, then watching the fog lift to reveal an unexpected fork — is one of the most evocative images of the book. It captures the experience of expanded awareness: not that the other paths weren’t always there, but that we simply couldn’t see them until something shifted our perspective. This is Dugan at his literary best: concrete, relatable and quietly illuminating.

The book also addresses the practical mechanics of goal setting, self-discovery and the importance of reconnecting with childhood joy. His advice to look back at what gave you pure, unconditioned pleasure as a child before fear, criticism and societal pressure narrowed your sense of the possible is useful guidance.

Choices: 5 Steps for Life is something rare, as Dugan writes the way a thoughtful person talks. This authenticity is ultimately the book’s greatest strength.

For anyone feeling stuck, overlooked or unsure that anything can be different, Richard Dugan’s voice arrives like a gentle hand on the shoulder: there are choices you don’t know about yet. Go find them.