Choices & How We Make Them

For the first time in a long while, I feel like my choices are actually leading to positive actions. Unfortunately, there was a big gap between then and now.

Why Comfort is So Uncomfortable

We tend to face our choices in strange ways. Often our choices differ in what we truly want. There are many reasons for such, but usually it’s because of comfort.

Back in September of 2008, I made the personal executive decision to change my life by moving to Australia. I planned out what I was going to do and how I was going to do it. Guess what, the planning and decision making (a.k.a. my choices) led me to Australia and a new-found lease on life. Yet, as soon as I came back stateside, the comfort level grew and I lost the grip on what truly was wanted.

As I look back on the roller coaster of lifestyle changes in the last 2+ years, I have found that it all comes back to my choices. Our success’ and failures all lie in what we choose to do.

This Will Lead to That

Joel Runyon and I spoke the other night and he said something that really touches the point of how choices effect our lives.

The success I see with my blog seems to directly effect my success in my life.

I wish I could say I said it first, but I can’t. Must give credit to Joel.

The thing is, he is absolutely 100% correct. My choices mirror my life. Not only with the blog either. How I choose to live out my excursions tends to directly effect my happiness.

Whatever this is that you are choosing right now will lead to that inevitable result. Don’t act like you don’t know that taking those 5 shots of Petron tequila back to back won’t lead to you praising the porcelain god all night. You know that this choice or decision will lead to that result that you may or may not like. Now, start applying this to other decisions that drinking.

How’d That Happen

I usually question results. Why? Because I tend to over-analyze.

When I come to the conclusion of what the choices were that led to the results, I find that, many times, we knew all along the outcome. We may hope for a brighter one, but odds are we knew all along that A+B was going to equal C.

In the past, I would ask why such a horrible thing happened to me. I would analyze the reasoning for such a result, but not come to the proper conclusion that my choices led to my results. I blamed others or poorly rationalized. And sure it took years to face the facts, but once I did I was able to improve my decision making and properly analyze how That happened.

Why Do We Make Decisions

Choices are of our own. Our fate is controlled by ourselves (…to an extent). So why do we make the decisions that we do?

As I write this, I am battling the decision to take this article in one direction or another. My decision will lead me down a path I feel is necessary to clarify my point. However, I do not know what the outcome will be. What I can do is take past experience and apply to this. We all do this daily. We primarily make decisions based on past experience to properly find the right path to our success.

So, if we have learned from past experience that this A+B equals C, then we obviously make no bad decisions, right? Wrong.

So, why do we make bad decisions too? I’d like to think my bad decisions are uncontrollable, but they aren’t. I made them, so I face the consequences. The reason we make the poor choice is because we are human and there is human error. For an unknown reason that I wish I could sell a pill for a lot of money that would immediately fix this problem, we make poor decisions at times. I wish I had all the answers, but I don’t. Maybe it is just humans being humans and continuing the process of always learning. However, we can almost always control this destiny as long as we focus our energy on the decision making process.

What I think most of us should do is try to capture the opportunity to control our outcome by analyzing our choices before we make them.

Right & Wrong Choices

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the most hypocritical of them all

That would be me.

You’d think that I make perfect decisions. Well, think again. I make a lot of bad decisions. Learning from those decisions has only led me to following the proper path in the future. Do I regret those decisions? For the most part, no. What I do with my evaluation of my choices is reflect (very often) on how I can improve my decision-making. A lot of decisions we cannot correct, but all of the decisions to come we can.

Take every opportunity of choice and learn from it.

This may sound like another, “Do this and your life will be perfect,” but it really does have purpose. The key is becoming more analytical. Be honest with yourself and analyze your choices. I have found that the more analytical I am, the better my life tends to work itself out.

The Path of Choice

It isn’t hard to make a choice or decision. It is hard to be honest with one’s self as to whether they are making the decision that is right for them.

There are times we may feel that this choice is the right. I am not saying it isn’t. But step away from you choice for a moment and be honest with yourself. If that leads you down the previous path of choice than let it be. Yet, if your new analytical ways have shown a light on a different path, then by all means take the new path.

Remember that choice is whatever we choose it to be.

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