Choices

You are where you are because of the choices you’ve made.  It’s really that simple.

You chose to date that person.  You chose to have that career.  You chose to stay home, or go out, or do that thing.  Not every choice is consequential, but they all impact you in some ways over time.  There are major life choices, that you make with the information that’s available to you at the time.  There are other choices you make because they are easy.  Whatever choices you’ve made, they are yours.  Own them.

The interesting thing is you always have a choice, even if it’s only a choice in how you perceive something.  This sounds easy, but is perhaps the most difficult thing for you to do.  If something bad happens, it’s easy to place blame.  But what about when something good happens, are you as quick to place blame for that good thing?  Or are you more likely to take responsibility?  Did the good thing happen because of something you did, and the bad thing because of what someone else did?  This is a choice.

The stoic way to approach this is things just happen.  Not good, not bad, they just happen.  They are just things that happen to you.  What matters is how you react to them.  I find great value in this approach, but don’t take it to the extreme, because it abdicates any responsibility you may have in the outcome.  My thought is to do your best, your maximum effort, but be grateful for whatever outcome you get.  Gratitude is much better than indifference, even if you are simply grateful for the lesson you’ve learned in failure.

One of the true tests of character is what you choose to do when no one is looking.  How do you spend your time?  What are you striving towards?  Did you choose to make your bed?  Or eat that salad?  Or read that book?  Are you choosing to make progress, to swim upstream, or to go with the flow?  How are you doing things when no one else is around?

You should know there is an opportunity cost of choices.  Odds are you have limited resources at the moment and you only have the same 24 hours in the day we all do.  You can only do one thing or the other.  You can’t play a game of hockey, and have dinner with your mother at the same time.

So with every choice, there is some opportunity cost associated with what you didn’t do.  What you chose not to do.  But all you can do is make the best choice with the information you have at the time.

One final note:  Not deciding is a choice.  Even if you don’t want to choose, that is a choice.  By just letting things happen, hiding from the reality of the world, you have to realize that you will then have to deal with the outcomes, whatever they might be.

And that is a choice you will have to live with.