Almost everything that’s ever happened in your life has been the result of a choice.
A lot of it has happened because of your own personal choices.
But even those things that have happened to you completely and totally outside of your control have usually resulted from a choice…
Someone else’s choice in that case. And it created circumstances, good or bad, that affected you.
Interesting, and quite sad, to think about.
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“Infinity” overwhelms us. We aren’t wired to understand or cope with it.
When we humans are faced with a seemingly infinite number of choices, most of the time we make no choice at all.
We freeze up, afraid to make the wrong one…
Or we just walk away…
Or, sometimes, we just go with whoever or whatever happens to be #1 that day—the “industry leader”.
And today, we have an infinite number of career choices. We grow up being told we can be anything… and in many cases that’s true. Most of the gatekeepers are gone.
But we’re also pushed to develop competence in many areas, rather than expertise or remarkability in just one or a few. We have to get Bs in everything, rather than an A+ in our favorite area and some Cs in the others.
This need to be good at everything, combined with too many choices, paralyzes us. Because we don’t want to pick the “wrong thing”. We don’t want to dedicate years of our lives and massive amounts of money to something that might not be a good fit.
So we don’t pick at all… Or we just pick the one that has the highest possible salary, the best job prospects, or the most security.
We don’t consider who we are, how we’re wired, what we love, what changes we’d like to see in the world…
We just go with whatever comes our way… but we can do so much better than that. We can contribute so much more.
But we have to choose what we’re going to focus on… and what we’re going to quit.
So what do you do? How do you overcome the paralysis of analysis? The overwhelm we experience when faced with too many choices?
Tell me your thoughts in the comments.
(H/t to Seth Godin for inspiring this post)
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Seth Godin’s blog this morning contained a statement that seemed to scream at me:
“If you’re simply speeding things up because you are in a hurry to get through it, it might be better to not do it at all.”
—Seth Godin, “Faster! Faster?”, 5/31/2021
If you’re rushing through something because you feel obligated to finish it, just quit!
No one says you HAVE to finish that book. Or that podcast. Or that online course.
We don’t have enough time to do everything we think we should do. We don’t even have enough time to do everything we want to do.
We have to pick and choose wisely so we get the most out of life we can. And if that means you’re three minutes into a podcast and lose interest, just turn it off. (Essentialism is a great book to help you make these decisions.)
My late uncle Alan thought the Compact Disk (CD) was the greatest invention in history, so much better than the cassette player.
When asked why, he said simply, “Life’s too short to waste on a bad song.”
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What is courage? It is the same thing as bravery?
Courage might be doing something even when you are terrified.
It might also be one’s readiness for action when a situation demands it.
Either way, courage is a choice. It is the act of deciding to act when the need arises.
Be courageous. Choose to act.
You are free to do anything you want. You are not free to choose the consequences.
Every choice we make has a natural consequence associated with it.
You can choose to eat McDonald’s three times a day (I’ve done this), but you cannot choose the consequences of this decision (I gained 40 pounds in a year, added 8 inches to my waist, and felt miserable most days).
You can choose to put your finger on a hot stove (why would you?), but you cannot choose whether or not you get burned. The natural consequence is a burned finger.
When you pick up one end of the stick, you pick up the other. – Stephen R. Covey
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I had a moment of clarity today when I was re-reading a definition of proactive behavior.
This definition stuck out today because I read it right after finishing my lunch, which I had ordered with absolutely no forethought.
How many times have I walked into a restaurant and placed an order without thinking? How many times have I ordered something because that was what I had always gotten?
My choice of what to eat might be predictable – it’s what I always get – but it certainly isn’t predetermined. So this means I am not making a choice between stimulus and response.
Between stimulus and response is our greatest power–the freedom to choose. – Stephen R. Covey
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Stimulus: walk into a restaurant for lunch.
Response: order the thing I always get, usually with less than ideal effects on my health.
I have a moment, in between arriving and ordering, where I can make a conscious decision about what to eat. This means I can choose to add value to my body, or I can choose to indulge in something less than ideal.
This is not a discussion of nutrition – it is a discussion of problem-solving. Think of all the decisions you make automatically each day, then pick one and imagine how you can respond between the stimulus and your automatic response.
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If you try something new, you might fail.
Why is that such a debilitating statement? Unless you are attempting to leap between two buildings or run past a speeding car on the interstate, our failures are rarely fatal.
Yet we are paralyzed by the thought of failing at a new side hustle, of being rejected when asking for a date, or of failing at the new hobby we have never before tried.
If being proactive means choosing how one respond’s to a situation, then we can fail proactively. You can look at failure as a reason to never again attempt something, or you can look at it as simply one way the new thing won’t work.
Thomas Edison tried 10,000 ways to make a lightbulb before he found the way that worked. He saw each failure, not as a discouragement to trying again, but as a stepping stone to success.
Choose to see failure as a learning experience and you will only ever improve the next time.
Resiliency is a skill that can be developed through practice. The first step is choosing to practice.
What makes you uncomfortable? The answer to that question will help determine where to start.
I hate asking people to make special accommodations for me: I always feel I am inconveniencing the other person (I rarely am), or that I am being a very annoying customer (if they think so, that’s their choice). So when my wife and I started to drastically reduce our waste production, I was uncomfortable with some of the suggestions she made.
My favorite example took place at our local Mexican restaurant: they have delicious salsa that we would buy in large tubs to take home and use during the week. These tubs were made of styrofoam and had plastic lids. My wife suggested that I take one of our many empty glass jars and ask for salsa to be placed inside. I was so reluctant, so uncomfortably scared to simply ask. It felt dangerous, even though the worst thing that could happen was to receive no as an answer. No danger at all, but my mind made it feel dangerous.
After numerous arguments (I was scared, remember?), I grudgingly went to the restaurant and made the request. The host looked at me curiously, but he acquiesced and placed the salsa in our jar. He even went a step further and informed me that there were no preservatives in the salsa; it would only keep for a week or so. A wave of relief washed over me.
The next week, when I went back for more salsa, there was a sign on the front counter.
“$2.99 jars of salsa to go. Bring the jar back for a $0.99 refill.”
The host, who was also the manager, bought a stock of small glass jars and decided to sell them. He was actively encouraging people to reuse the jars while also proactively choosing to reduce the waste his restaurant produced.
By choosing (i.e. being forced by my incredible wife) to do something that made me uncomfortable, my wife and I achieved one of our small waste reduction goals. But the most inspiring thing was the change it created in someone else.
Seek out discomfort in all areas of your life. It makes you stronger mentally. Discomfort in the gym makes you stronger physically.
Other people avoid discomfort, which means you will be doing things others won’t. The intersection of discomfort and action creates change the world desperately needs.
Change makes things better. Seeking out discomfort makes things better.
What makes you uncomfortable?
Go do that.
I have a cat. His name is Jack. Captain Jack Sparrow, if you want the full name.
Jack is the most annoying cat in the world.
If you go into a different room, he will sit outside the door and scream at you. “MerEYOWWWWWWwwwwwwwwww” or something like that. Over and over again until you return to the room in which he is sitting or you let him inside with you.
He beats up his sisters without mercy.
He went through a phase at 3 years old where he peed on the floor in front of our couch if my wife didn’t come home by a certain hour.
He scratches the paint off doors; eats expensive cables like they are spaghetti noodles; chews up the beater on my bass drum pedal; and just this morning, we discovered he had destroyed a set of blinds.
He also loves my wife unconditionally and makes her very happy.
For the first few years we had Jack, I would get visibly angry with him when he misbehaved. He knew it, too, and he never liked me as much as my wife.
However, since I started my deep dive into being a more effective and proactive individual, however, I have noticed a change.
I came to the conclusion that while what he did was very frustrating, I was choosing to react in a very negative manner which upset me and made him unappy with me. I was choosing to yell, to stamp my feet in anger, to curse the day we adopted him. What good did it do?
When I implemented “be proactive” into my life, I began with Jack. I lived by the idea that there is a space between stimulus and response where I could choose how I would react.
Now, when Jack misbehaves, I put him in time out – not with anger or scare tactics, but by simply picking him up and putting him into his room.
I feel better, Jack feels better. Now, he crawls up and falls asleep on my chest when I’m trying to take a nap on the couch, purring all the while.
You get to decide how a certain stimulus affects you. You cannot choose the consequence of the stimulus; I could not choose whether or not the blinds got broken when Jack climbed behind them. That was a natural consequence. But there are also natural consequences to my response:
Something else you should know – since I began reacting better to Jack’s antics, his behavior has changed. He is less destructive, less abusive to his sisters, and less whiny.
Or perhaps, I just don’t notice it as much because of how I choose to respond.
If being proactive works with cats, how well do you think it will work with your human relationships?
It may not feel like much when it’s all you can physically do.
I’m speaking, of course, on producing, practicing, or creating when there just isn’t enough time in the day to get much of anything done. On those days, all you can do is all you can do.
And all you can do is good enough.
Write a few sentences instead of fretting over not writing a chapter.
Practice your instrument for 15 or 20 minutes instead of saying, “screw it” because you didn’t master an entire piece today.
Draw a doodle comic, not some magnificent portrait.
Go for a 10 minute walk rather than beating yourself up over the fact that you didn’t spend an hour at the gym.
Incremental improvement. Streaks. Baby steps. 5 minutes here; another 8 minutes there. This is how progress is made.
Change your mindset; realize that you are building mental fortitude and creating habits when you do just a little something each day rather than adopting an all-or-nothing mindset.
You might feel like you suck. You don’t. You’re doing a heck of a lot better than the person that decided not to show up today.
And if you can’t do anything at all, wipe the slate clean and show up again tomorrow.
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