It has been said that life is the letter C nestled between the letters B and D where C are our Choices taken between Birth and Death. In other words, as Wayne Dyer observed, “Our lives are a sum total of the choices we have made.” A hundred years prior, the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre pointed out that “We are our choices.” More recently, the author John Maxwell wrote, “Life is a matter of choices, and every choice you make makes you.” Our hopes, dreams, aspiration, potential and thoughts all take a back seat to our behaviors which reflect who we truly are. Our behaviors are the result of our choices.
J.K. Rowling noted, “It is our choices … that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” Again and again, we’re seeing that it’s our choices that create the core of who we are. The evangelist Victoria Osteen encourages us to “Remember, the choices we make today shape the people we become tomorrow.” Self-help guru and best-selling author Karen Salmansohn wrote, “I’m a big believer that your life is basically a sum of all the choices you make. The better your choices, the better the opportunity to lead a happy life.”
Unfortunately, too many of us are too casual about our choices. Morgan Housel in his book, The Psychology of Money, offers a startling statistic: “People spend more on lottery tickets than movies, video games, music, sporting events, and books combined.” This sounds, if true, terrifying. Blind hope is to what too many of us are entrusting our futures. It’s even worse when we consider that some folk intent on purchasing lottery tickets insist on having a “strategy” for their efforts. Comedian, Adam Corolla, in his book I’m Your Emotional Support Animal makes fun of what he calls the “Lottery System Guy.” Corolla writes “The lottery is, by its nature, random. You can’t systematize something that is not systematizable. They’re like, ‘First I take Bob Crane’s birthday—he was born 7-13-28—then I add my current weight…’ You understand this is not a system, right? Those are just random numbers. And how’s it going? Is this a theory you put together while living in your Chevette? You’re chain-smoking at Binion’s and arguing with a cocktail waitress over a two-for-one coupon. You have the same ‘system’ for betting college football, but you’re down nine hundred dollars for the year. The system you should really be working on is one to reestablish communication with your estranged adult daughter.” Corolla’s sarcasm pointedly pokes holes in our efforts to take hopeless shortcuts while avoiding taking difficult but more meaningful action. When we look to the heavens for help to our problems, we’re employing a lotto strategy. We’re looking to some external event, a windfall, a helping hand, somebody, something, somewhere to free us from the responsibility of managing our own problems. When embracing a lotto strategy, we’re abandoning our agency, giving away our ability to choose, and playing a reduced role in our own lives.
A consequence of conceding our choices is that others are happy to step in and fill the void. Marketers are happy to tell you what to do with your time and money. Experts are everywhere and are at the ready with input on how you should live your life. In A Heretic’s Manifesto: Essays on the Unsayable Brendan O’Neill writes of the philosopher Immanuel Kant who had disdain for being dependent on others for direction. O’Neill notes, “Kant had the answer to such presumptive efforts to control our lives. In his 1784 essay, ‘What is Enlightenment?’, he raged against those who would tell us what to think and how to exist. He complained of having ‘a book that thinks for me, a pastor who acts as my conscience, a physician who prescribes my diet’, all of which means ‘I have no need to exert myself’. These ‘guardians’, he said, treat us like ‘cattle’, making us view ‘the step to maturity not only as hard, but also as extremely dangerous.’ The solution to such harmful meddling? Ignore it. ‘Walk firmly’ and ‘cultivate your own mind’, said Kant. ‘Have the courage to use your own understanding.’ So it must be today, too. Remember, you will always know yourself better than they know you.” Where we depend on experts, we’re ceding control to those that likely don’t have our best interests at heart. Rejoice in your choices by relishing responsibility for them.
Should you still have doubt about the clout of your choices, know this: NOCLYS. NoOne Cares Like You Should. That’s right, no one cares like you should. Too often, we pass off responsibility for our own affairs with hopes that others will act with our best interests at heart. Unfortunately, others either don’t know or don’t care about our interests. They are running their business for their benefit, not for ours. They are developing their systems to satisfy their needs, not to support ours. This is true with respect to finances, fitness, nutrition, health, and so much more. The extra warranty and undercoating package the car dealer are trying to sell isn’t because they desperately care about protecting our interests, it’s for the dealer’s benefit. When we’re the customer, we need to put in the work to identify our interests and exert effort to ensure we are protected when purchasing something. That’s the point of the Latin phrase, Caveat Emptor or Buyer Beware. No one will care like you should.
If there’s truth to the importance of our choices on the outcomes of our lives, then what choices are you making? Are you consciously making your choices? Or are you leaning into a lotto strategy? Are you willing to help yourself or are you hoping for divine intervention or a lucky break? As importantly, how seriously are you taking your daily decisions? We don’t want to outsource our lives to AI. ChatGPT isn’t for you or me. Artificial intelligence diminishes our place in the world. Instead of ceding control to AI, we should seize control of our own personal AI. That is, our Awareness and Intention. We can start with realizing as Martha Beck wrote, “Every day brings new choices.” From an awareness that our choices have consequences and that we are constantly presented with choices, we can seek to act with intention on those choices.
To best give ourselves a chance to act with intention, we need to insert time for us to consider our choices. Legendary US College coach, Paul Assaiante, offers a tasty metaphor that we’re encouraged to try in real life to help embed this idea. Take an Oreo cookie and carefully separate one side of the cookie from the other side of the cookie and cream. Do this with a second cookie. Now combine the two cookie and cream pieces to make a fat, cream-filled center, mega Oreo. To give ourselves a chance and make quality, conscious choices, we need to increase the cream in our lives. Where, the cream represents the time between our thoughts and actions. It’s where our choices lie. More cream, more time for choosing. More time for choosing, greater quality decisions.
In Man’s Search for Meaning, holocaust survivor and psychiatrist, Viktor Frankl gave us, “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” In other words, we’re more than a reflex. We’re more than an impulse. The goal is to be calculating, conscious, and considered. Doubling the cream allows us to insert ourselves and choose with intention. With more cream, we’re pausing to ponder.
We’re not dependent on perfect circumstances, abundant resources, or the ideal time to get started. We’re leaning on the wisdom of the late US President, Teddy Roosevelt who gave us the classic quote, “Do what you can, where you are, with what you have.” For example, is there an hour a day that you could spend doing something that develops you? Can you take an hour away from an activity you’re currently doing that is little more than a pleasant distraction? Are you scrolling social media, watching Netflix, a reality TV show, or live sports for more than a few hours each day? Can you choose development over distraction for a brief period daily? Could you try to choose your development over distraction for just 15 minutes a day this week and then work up to an hour a day over the course of a month?
Where do you think you would be if you spent an hour a day on trying to get better at something a year from now? Where would you be relative to the person that instead of using that hour a day to develop is using the time to tune out and bask in some form of immediate gratification? Over the course of a few days or a week, the difference between these two individuals would be minimal. However, over the course of a year, the consequence of this simple choice would be significant. Over the course of five years, whether it be your personal health, fitness, a hobby, a relationship, or a professional skill. Trying to use some of your time daily developing yourself will lead to a serious separation of skill over time.
We make our choices, and our choices make us. As Eleanor Roosevelt said, “In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility? Are you choosing constructively or destructively? We’re not seeking perfect choices all the time. We’re trying to be right a little more than we’re wrong. We’re working to embrace the “I” in choice and own responsibility for them. In so doing, we’re internalizing the observation of T.E. Lawrence that, “Help comes from within, not from without.”
