You Have Choices!

Every day we have choices to make. We have paths to choose and decisions to consider. How we handle these decisions and choices determines not only who we are, but who we will become and where we will be headed. Though some decisions will be more important than others, the results of even the most innocuous decision may turn out to surprise you!

There are a lot of people who take little or no responsibility for who they are and what they have become. They are quick to blame others for their failures and shortcomings. Though these same people are quick to take credit for what success they encounter, they still hold other accountable and responsible for almost everything. If you are one of those people, you really need a wake-up call and I hope this article serves that purpose. If you are not one of those people, you also need to understand why you should not become one of them! Hopefully this article will serve that purpose as well.

Successful people realize that they control most of their destiny. I would like to say you control all of it but that simply is not true. No one wishes to get cancer, diabetes, or some other serious disease. Though you can make a decision to lead a healthy life-style, work out regularly, and eat healthy, that will not guarantee that you will not get one of those diseases. It may reduce the chances, but it will not eliminate them.

What you need to do is accept the fact that YOU are in control of how your life proceeds. YOU control how you go about achieving your goals and dreams. Though you may look to others for guidance and suggestions, it is YOU that makes the final determination. Let's face it, when everything is said and done, it is YOU that will have to live with the outcome. Others might be affected by it but YOU will bear the responsibility.

It is easy to fall into the "trap" of blaming others for your failures and "hard luck". After all, some things are out of your control so you really can't be responsible for everything right? Technically, yes but practically, no. The key is to be brutally honest with yourself and allow yourself to accept blame when it lies at your feet.

Accepting blame is critical to success because successful people LEARN from their mistakes. Accepting blame allows you to learn from your mistakes. If you don't accept blame and understand your mistake, how the heck can you learn from it and move on???

Being able to learn from one's mistakes is a huge tool in becoming successful. While it is easy to read and learn from a book or course, being able to live through something and learn from the process is among the top forms of education. That is why people test products, advertising campaigns, and other things. They want to understand what works and what doesn't!

If a person makes a mistake, acknowledges it, and then learns from it, they have made a powerful advance in their lives! They have eliminated one roadblock to success that was in their path and can now move on to conquer whatever is next. It is when people make the same mistake over and over and over again that failure perpetuates itself.

You might ask yourself right now "Why would someone not want to learn from their mistakes?" The answer in most cases is either ego or embarrassment. We do not want to appear foolish or be embarrassed that we were unable to achieve something that others feel we should be able to achieve. Our ego gets in the way and we find all kinds of excuses to deflect the blame or responsibility.

Did you ever watch a baby learn to walk? The first steps are tentative and they often fall down. Gradually the first step turns into two steps, then three, and so on. As they fall they learn to balance better and gradually they are walking around nice and steady. Pretty soon, they are running all around the place!

Learning is based on processing information. No one ever said that the only way to learn is by learning what is right. Sometimes the best lessons are learned from failure. Thomas Edison, the inventor of the electric light, was asked if he felt he failed when his first 100 light bulbs failed. His reply was "Quite the opposite. I now know 150 things that don't work!"

I have read that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results. If you stop and think about it, that's exactly what happens when someone fails to learn from their mistakes and blames others!

Okay, back to choices and the role they play in our lives.....

During the course of our lives, we will be expected to make choices. When we are young, it might be what sport to go out for in school, what musical instrument to play, and later on, what career we think we would like to pursue. These choices involve us deciding what WE would like, based on our abilities and interests. As we grow older, we will be required to make other choices as well.

As you grow older, you will realize that you have made some good choices and some really bad choices in the past. The bad choices were not necessarily bad if you made them with the right information, they just did not work out as you thought.

When I was young, I thought it would be great to play the clarinet. I liked the sound from listening to Benny Goodman records. So I took clarinet lessons in school. What a disaster! I had zero aptitude, the clarinet sounded like a rusty dump truck when I played it, and I hated every minute of it. Wrong decision, yes but I made it with what I thought was good information at the time. Bad decision but I learned something from it. Later on I took drum lessons, loved every minute, and I still play today.

Notice that I did not give up on music; I just found out that one instrument was not for me but another was. I learned from my mistake and moved on. Had I stayed with the clarinet I would continue to be miserable and would never have been good at it. Yet, I loved music. I just found the best way for ME to play it!

Engineers have a process when they are designing new equipment. This same process is also a recipe for success. That simple 3 step process is called:
Build - Test - Refine

In life, the building part is our decisions. The testing part comes from living with the decision and seeing if it works well for us. If not, then we "refine" things by making a new decision towards something that we feel would work better. This is an on-going process.

The above example is a perfect example. I loved music and selected the clarinet. That was the building process. I didn't like it after trying it. That was the test phase. I made a decision to stop the clarinet and start playing drums. That was the refining stage.

When you were young, and as you got older, you also used this same process when you were dating. You thought you wanted to date this type of person, and then you found out you wanted something else so you dated someone else until you found what you thought was the right person for you. Same process, different application.

All of these examples require an honest evaluation in order to learn and move on. If you are not honest you could wind up stuck with something you know deep down is not right but you refuse to admit to yourself, and others, that you were wrong. The end result is that you are not living the type of life that YOU want and you will never be happy or fulfilled as long as you continue down that path.

Wrong choices can often be corrected when they don't work out. How long it might take to correct things will likely depend on the particular choice involved. For example, if you decide you wanted to purchase the black jacket instead of the brown one, you could either return it or save up and purchase a black one. Not a big deal at all. Just an inconvenience. But, let's say you marry the wrong person, or choose the wrong career, correcting those decisions will take a lot longer and require a lot more resources!

I guess at this point we should define what a "good choice" really is. A good choice is a choice made carefully and with all the information available at that time. Another term for this type of decision is an "informed decision."

When you make an informed decision, it means that you made that particular decision after carefully weighing all the factors that might come into play. For example, let's say you were trying to decide on what career you would like to pursue.

You would look at the skills, talents, interests, and abilities that you possess already and determine whether or not they are a good fit for that career. You look into the future of that career and determine that there will likely be a good market for that career in the future. You also look at schools and find affordable ones that provide the right courses of study to prepare you for that field. You even talk to parents, friends, and counselors who agree with your choice.

When you consider all that information, you can make an informed decision. That does not mean you have made the "right" decision only that you made the right decision for now. Who knows that the future holds for anyone? The best we can do is look at everything we possibly can to help us make the right decisions and then move on.

In contrast, a "bad" decision is made by relying on emotion, fantasy, or things not based in reality. For example, if you are five feet tall in high school, a career choice of NBA player is not a realistic choice no matter how glamorous it might be or how much you want it.

This is where being honest comes into play. We need to be honest with ourselves when it comes to what we are actually able to do. I would have loved to be a professional drummer but I knew that I was nowhere good enough to do that. I just did not have the skills required to succeed at that profession. Had I not been honest with myself about my level of skill, I likely would have remained a failure for a long time.

That is not to say that we should not pursue our dreams, even if they are a "reach" for us. In these cases, we need to be honest and have something to "fall back" on in case we cannot achieve our dream job or career. You have all heard the phrase "putting all your eggs in one basket". The same can be said for making choices going through life. Pursue your dreams but make sure you have something else waiting for you in case you are not successful!

Our choices are like forks in the road. Each choice we make takes us down a different path. Sometimes choices take us a little out of our way and we can find our way back. Other times choices take us dramatically the other way and it takes long way to get back to where we need to be.

The key is to be careful when making our choices and to make informed decisions whenever possible. The other key is to take responsibility for those decisions once we make them. Accept responsibility for however things go. Good or bad, acknowledge what you did and learn from it.

Successful people understand the importance of remaining focused and making good choices. It is all right to take risks as long as you make informed decisions and have something to fall back on. For people who take the time to make informed decisions, and who accept responsibility for those decisions, the rewards can be great and very fulfilling.

The next time you are faced with a choice that you have to make, remember to make it wisely and learn from it.