Do We Choose Our Lives Before We Are Born?
- Mar 26
- 10 min read
Updated: 4 days ago
Exploring Soul Planning, Free Will and the Journey Before Birth
Have you ever wondered whether your life was already waiting for you before you were born?
It is one of the oldest questions humanity has ever asked. Long before books were written about reincarnation or consciousness, people wondered whether life unfolds by chance or whether there is a deeper pattern quietly shaping the experiences we encounter.
Why are some people born into loving families while others face extraordinary hardship
Why do certain relationships seem destined to appear at exactly the right moment, while others leave us carrying questions that last a lifetime?
And perhaps the most difficult question of all—if there is a purpose behind our lives, did we have any part in choosing it?
These questions become especially meaningful for people exploring Life Between Lives. If the soul continues beyond physical death, it seems natural to wonder what happens before a new incarnation begins.
Is there a moment where the soul reflects on what has been learned?
Does it consciously choose another lifetime?
Or do we simply arrive, with no memory of what came before and no influence over where our journey begins?
Different spiritual traditions offer different answers. Some suggest that every detail of our lives has already been planned. Others emphasise complete Free will, proposing that nothing is decided until we begin making choices here on Earth. Between these two perspectives lies another possibility—one that many people find both hopeful and deeply reassuring.
What if life is neither completely predetermined nor completely random?
What if the soul participates in choosing the direction of a lifetime, while still leaving space for freedom, uncertainty and the countless choices that shape who we become along the way?
This perspective does not ask us to believe that every joy and every tragedy was carefully scripted before we were born. Instead, it invites us to consider that our lives may be more like journeys than performances. A destination may exist, certain themes may call to us more strongly than others, yet the path itself remains alive. Every decision, every relationship and every unexpected turn continues to influence where that journey ultimately leads.
Perhaps that is why this question has fascinated people for centuries. It is not simply about what happened before we were born. It is about understanding the life we are living now.
What Does Soul Planning Really Mean?
When people first hear the phrase Soul Planning, they often imagine something highly detailed, almost as though every event of our lives has been carefully arranged before we are born. It is an understandable image. If the soul chooses a lifetime, surely it must also choose every relationship, every challenge and every turning point along the way.
Yet the experiences described during Life Between Lives sessions often suggest something much gentler.
Rather than planning every detail, many people describe becoming aware of broader intentions. Instead of choosing an exact sequence of events, the soul appears to move towards experiences that offer opportunities for growth. The emphasis is less on controlling the future and more on creating the possibility for certain qualities to develop.
Imagine planning a long journey across a country you have never visited before.
You might decide that you want to explore mountains rather than coastlines, or that you hope to learn the language, experience the culture and meet the people who live there. Those intentions shape the direction of your journey, but they do not determine every conversation you will have, every unexpected delay or every beautiful discovery you make along the way. Some of the most meaningful moments will almost certainly be the ones you never planned at all.
Many people describe Soul Planning in a remarkably similar way. Rather than choosing every circumstance, the soul may choose themes.
One soul may wish to explore courage after many lifetimes spent avoiding difficult choices. Another may be drawn towards compassion, patience or forgiveness. Someone else may seek to understand creativity, leadership or unconditional love from an entirely new perspective. These are not fixed destinations waiting to be reached. They are invitations to grow through the experiences that life naturally presents.
This perspective also changes the way we think about challenges.
If every painful event had been deliberately selected before birth, it would be difficult to reconcile that idea with the compassion many people experience during Life Between Lives sessions. Instead, it seems more accurate to imagine that the soul chooses opportunities rather than suffering itself.
Example: Growth often requires challenge, but challenge can take many different forms. Two people may both be learning courage, yet one discovers it through starting a new business while another finds it through leaving an unhealthy relationship. The lesson may be similar even though the experiences themselves are completely different.
Perhaps this is why no two lives ever unfold in exactly the same way.
Even when people appear to face similar circumstances, their responses shape entirely different journeys. The possibilities may have existed from the beginning, but the path itself continues changing with every choice that is made.
Seen from this perspective, Soul Planning becomes something profoundly hopeful.
Life is not a rigid script that removes responsibility from us, nor is it a series of meaningless accidents. It becomes a living conversation between intention and experience, between the deeper wisdom of the soul and the countless choices we continue making every single day.
And perhaps that conversation begins long before we are born... yet continues for as long as we are willing to keep growing.
Where Does Free Will Fit Into the Picture?
If the soul participates in choosing certain themes before birth, an obvious question follows.
If my life was planned, do my choices really matter?
This is perhaps one of the most important questions in the entire discussion, because without free will, life begins to feel more like a script than a journey. Every success would already be guaranteed. Every mistake would already be unavoidable. Every relationship would simply play out according to a plan that could never be changed. Yet that is not how life feels.
Every day we make decisions that shape our future. Some are small and almost unnoticed. Others quietly alter the direction of our lives forever. A single conversation can lead to a lifelong friendship. One courageous decision can change an entire career. Choosing to forgive can free us from years of emotional pain, while choosing fear instead of trust can keep us standing still long after an opportunity has appeared.
Life continually reminds us that our choices matter. Perhaps this is because soul planning and free will are not opposites. Perhaps they are partners.
Imagine setting out on a long mountain hike. Before you leave home, you choose your destination. You study the landscape, prepare your equipment and decide which mountain you hope to climb. Yet once the journey begins, countless decisions remain entirely your own. You may choose one trail over another. You may stop to rest, change direction, explore an unexpected path or even decide that today's conditions are not right and return another time.
The destination may have inspired the journey. But the experience itself is created through every choice you make along the way.
Many people feel that incarnation works in much the same way.
The soul may choose certain opportunities for learning, but how those opportunities unfold depends on the countless decisions made throughout a lifetime—not only by us, but also by every person whose path intersects with our own. We influence one another constantly. Every act of kindness creates possibilities that did not exist before. Every decision born from fear shapes the experiences that follow. Our lives are woven together in ways that are far more interconnected than we usually realise.
This perspective also removes a burden that many people unknowingly carry.
Sometimes people become anxious when they hear the idea of Soul Planning because they worry that every painful experience must have been deliberately chosen before birth. They wonder whether illness, loss or trauma somehow reflects a decision their soul made long ago.
Personally, I do not believe the experiences described in Life Between Lives support such a rigid interpretation.
Again and again, people describe a reality that feels compassionate rather than deterministic. They speak about possibilities rather than fixed outcomes, about growth rather than punishment and about learning rather than judgement. Human life remains unpredictable because it is lived alongside billions of other human beings, each exercising their own freedom to choose.
Perhaps that is why Free Will matters so deeply. Without it, courage would have no meaning. Forgiveness would not be a choice. Compassion would simply be programmed behavior rather than something freely offered from the heart. It is our freedom to respond differently that allows consciousness to continue evolving.
And perhaps that is what the soul values most—not that we follow a perfect plan, but that we keep choosing, learning and growing through every experience life places before us.
What About the Difficult Parts of Life?
Whenever we begin talking about soul planning, one question inevitably rises above all the others.
What about suffering?
If our souls participate in choosing a lifetime, how do we make sense of illness, loss, trauma or experiences that no one would ever consciously choose? It is a deeply personal question, and one that deserves to be approached with great care.
For me, this is where it becomes especially important not to make absolute claims.
I do not believe it is helpful—or compassionate—to tell someone that every painful experience was deliberately chosen before they were born. Imagine saying that to someone who has lost a child, survived abuse or is living with a serious illness. Even if our intention is to offer meaning, such explanations can unintentionally add another layer of suffering by making people feel responsible for pain they never wanted.
The experiences described during Life Between Lives sessions often suggest something much more nuanced.
Rather than showing souls choosing suffering for its own sake, they frequently point towards choosing opportunities for growth, while recognising that once a human life begins, countless factors influence how that life unfolds. We are not living in isolation. Every person we meet is making their own choices, responding to their own fears, hopes and circumstances. Our lives continually intersect with the lives of others, creating possibilities that no soul could fully predict in every detail.
Imagine planting a seed.
You may choose the type of tree you wish to grow and carefully prepare the soil, but you cannot control every season that follows. Some years bring abundant rain. Others bring storms, drought or unexpected challenges. The seed still carries its potential, but how it grows depends on many influences beyond the gardener's control.
Perhaps our lives are something like that:
The soul may choose the seed.
Life shapes the seasons.
And we, through our daily choices, decide how we respond to whatever those seasons bring.
This perspective does not remove hardship, nor does it pretend that everything happens for a reason we can immediately understand. Some experiences remain painful no matter how much we search for meaning within them. Grief is still grief. Loss is still loss. Compassion asks us to honor those experiences rather than explain them away.
Yet over time, many people discover that even life's darkest chapters can become places where unexpected qualities begin to grow. Courage often appears where fear once lived. Compassion deepens because we have known suffering ourselves. Wisdom emerges from experiences we would never have chosen, yet would not erase because of the person they helped us become.
Perhaps the soul does not seek suffering.
Perhaps it seeks growth.
And because growth belongs to human life, it sometimes unfolds through experiences we could never have imagined when the journey first began. That possibility does not answer every question. But for many people, it offers something equally valuable. Hope.
The hope that even when life feels uncertain, painful or profoundly unfair, our story is still unfolding—and that no single chapter, however difficult, is capable of defining the whole journey.
Living the Life You Are Choosing Today
Whether or not we planned parts of our lives before we were born, there is one truth that remains the same. This moment has not yet been lived.
It is easy to become fascinated by questions about pre-birth planning, soul contracts and reincarnation. They invite us to look beyond the boundaries of a single lifetime and consider the possibility that our existence is part of something much greater. Yet there is also a quiet danger in becoming so focused on what may have happened before we arrived that we forget where our greatest influence actually lies.
It lies here. In the choices we make today.
Perhaps this is why so many people return from a Life Between Lives session talking less about the past and more about the present. They do not become preoccupied with trying to identify every soul contract or every lesson they may have chosen before incarnation. Instead, they begin asking a much simpler question.
"Given the life I have... how do I want to live it?"
That question changes everything.
It shifts our attention away from searching for certainty and towards living with greater awareness. Instead of wondering whether every event was meant to happen, we begin noticing how every response creates the next chapter of our story. We cannot always choose the circumstances we face, but we can choose how we meet them.
We can choose kindness instead of resentment, courage instead of avoidance and compassion instead of judgement.
Those choices may seem small at the time, yet they quietly shape not only our own lives but also the lives of everyone whose path crosses ours.
Perhaps that is the true meeting place between soul planning and free will.
The soul may arrive carrying certain intentions, but it is through the countless ordinary decisions of everyday life that those intentions gradually become reality. Growth does not happen all at once. It happens conversation by conversation, relationship by relationship and choice by choice.
This perspective can also bring a deep sense of peace.
It reminds us that we do not have to solve every mystery before we can live a meaningful life. We do not need absolute certainty about what happened before birth or what will happen after death in order to love the people around us more fully today. The questions themselves can remain open while life continues unfolding with remarkable beauty and possibility. Perhaps that is why this subject continues to resonate with so many people.
It is not really about discovering whether we chose this life.
It is about discovering that, whatever happened before we arrived, we are still choosing who we become every single day.
And perhaps that choice has been the greatest gift of all.
Continue Exploring Your Soul's Journey
If this article has sparked your curiosity, you may also enjoy reading:
Together, these articles explore how the soul may prepare for incarnation, evolve through relationships and continue learning beyond a single lifetime.
If you feel called to explore these questions through your own experience, I offer private Life Between Lives and Past Life Regression sessions online in a safe, grounded and compassionate environment. Every session is unique because every soul brings a different story, different questions and a different path. My role is simply to guide you gently as your own understanding begins to unfold.
Perhaps we will never know with complete certainty what was chosen before we were born.
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