Everyone has the power of choice. Whether you think your back is up against the wall, the amount of options you have isn’t zero. It’s never too late and you always have the choice to rise above. Your failures and successes are solely within your control and you can face obstacles that come your way.
You could choose to blame your problems to other people within society. It could be the government or it could be something else. You may absolutely be right, there’s no doubt about that. However, it doesn’t matter whose fault it is. It matters how you’re going to forge ahead from what happened.
You will sometimes lose in the game of life and sometimes you will win at the game of life. There are many times when people took advantage of me and I lost in ways that I never thought was imaginable or possible. It stings when you find out that you’ve been had. It ridiculously stings.
I finally found out what it feels like to lose so much because my prior job underpaid me by 20 – 25%. It was shocking that the companies were happy to do something like that. However, I learned from the negotiation. I now know what to do. I’m supposed to say no more oftentimes than saying yes.
I have the power of choice in every situation and there are choices that I can use at my disposal. That’s how you can forge ahead with life as well. You may be the victim at certain points and you will be the winner at other points. It’s time to take advantage of the power that you have. It’s the most powerful thing that you can do.
The Power of Choice is Solely Within You
When I was in the fifth grade, my mom said words to me that lit a fire to motivate me as much as possible. She said to me, “during elementary, you don’t have to do well but as you go to high school, you have to do well”. That scared me. That gave fear in my head. It made me think, “if I don’t do that, what will happen to me?”.
That’s when I realized that if I fail, then it’s completely my fault and completely on me. The power of choice is completely within my control. I control my effort and nobody else. That’s when I started to explode my effort in school and in everything that I did. I graduated 4th out of 700 kids in my high school.
The effort didn’t stop there and I kept going. No matter where you are in life, there’s someone else who had it worse than you but ended with more. You have the power to build your life to where you want to build it. It does take effort in order to get there. No one got there by not putting in effort.
No one is responsible for your failures or successes. You are the accumulation of the choices you made in your earlier years. Every choice that you made two years ago is leading to your life today. Every choice that you’re making today is to affect your life two years from today.
What are you going to do that you are going to be thankful for? You don’t always have to keep saying yes to the people who hurt you. You could cut ties with them. There are words and actions that you can do that will affect the outcome of the results. Choices are powerful.
How to Unlock the Power of Choice
One way to unlock the power of choice is to SMASH that social share button and post to your favorite social media! Your friends will absolutely thank you for a valuable article that betters their life. They may think they are less powerful than they actually are so let’s change that.
So with that said, let’s get into the concrete steps on unlocking the power of choice.
1) Take Your Time
This is the most easiest pressure tactic that people use against you. In my first apartment, they had a “rental specials! Limited time!” sign out up on the front office. That sign’s been up there for the entire 3 years that I’ve lived there. When someone is pressuring you to do something, that’s a sign you should say no.
There are very few exceptions. Some offers on Shark Tank are so exceptional that it’s an offer that the entrepreneur shouldn’t refuse. In that case, you say yes without hesitation. However, in general, when someone is pressuring you, you say no. That’s a tell. Usually companies who are confident they are offering the best product won’t pressure you.
They know their competition is so bad that you’re going to be happy with your purchase. Gym memberships are notorious for putting out “limited time offers” only for the limited time offer to exist for the rest of the year. When someone is trying to get you to do something on their timeline, that’s a bad sign.
They’re attempting to take the power of choice away from you.
2) Make a Pros and Cons List
This includes both qualitative and quantitative factors into your decision. The quantitative factors could mean just dollar signs. Qualitative factors could mean your overall sense of health. Whatever the case may be, there are many factors that you need to consider before making your decision.
Very rarely will you get an offer of a lifetime or a deal of a lifetime that you can’t refuse. Oftentimes, there’s going to be complications with everything. If you think through a decision and look at the pros and cons of making the decision, then that’s unlocking the power of choice.
Are you going to be happy long term? Will you have any regrets about changing the status quo? Remember to evaluate just how bad you actually have it currently. You don’t want to run away from something, you want to go to something. That you’re looking forward to. I’ve ran away from something before and have been filled with regrets.
3) Consult Others
One of my friends had a really good advice when I was considering a job offer to work in California. I was afraid because I was losing all of my friends and the life that I built up in Texas. Yes, the opportunities are much better in California than in Texas. However, I still couldn’t feel bad at the thought of losing all of my friends.
When I consulted my friends, he said these words: “The closest friends you have in Texas, you’re not going to lose contact with. They will still stick by you. Even then, at the worst, you will make new friends in California”. That instantly made me stop and cross that off as a consideration point.
I didn’t end up taking the job in California but it was great to know which reasons were sound and which reasons weren’t. Sometimes, other people can have better and clearer vision than you. That’s the power of choice. You don’t have to go through the analysis alone and outside perspectives can help you out.
4) Take a Choice and Make it the Right One
You have the power to take a decision and make it right. Choices are powerful and the power solely lies on you. You are smart enough that whatever choice you decide on, you’re not going to fail at it because you’re not going to make it fail. Power of choice at play. Situations are adaptable.
There are very few situations where you made an irreversible decision. Mostly, decisions are reversible. It might take a lot of effort in order to reverse the decision. However, that doesn’t mean that it is impossible. One former coworker I know took a job at another company, didn’t like it, and took a job back at the old company.
After just 3 weeks of working at the new company. Decisions aren’t impossible to reverse course. There have been more out of the box things that happened than just a reversal of your course. So take the chance and take the leap of faith. You never know where that decision will lead you to by the end.
5) Choose What’s Best For You
There are companies who try to convince you to take their offer by saying, “we gave you an offer, you owe me”. Nope. They gave you an offer because they thought you could help their interests. Not out of the goodness of their hearts. Same with you. You’re offering your labor to them because you thought they could help your interests.
Not out of the goodness of your heart. It’s nothing personal, it’s just business. With personal relationships, there has to be more thought behind it rather than a strict, “cost/benefit” analysis. However, with business relationships, it just requires a simple cost/benefit analysis.
The power of choice in business relationships mean you choose based on your best interests. Not for anyone else’s, but yours. They wouldn’t hesitate to get rid of you as soon as you don’t fulfill their interests. Which is completely OK, that’s business. You shouldn’t hesitate to get rid of them either, if it came down to it.
6) Sleep On It
When I get job offers, after sleeping on it is when I see the most mental clarity. I’m not stressed and not pressured to make a decision. For some reason, the unconscious mind is better at processing information than the conscious mind. That’s when you know whether you made the right or wrong decision.
The power of choice requires you to make a decision that you are happy with long term. If you can’t survive one night without having full of conviction, then that means there’s something wrong. I’ve woken up with heart burns and heartbeats racing when something was wrong. It just wasn’t a good feeling.
If just one night makes all the difference in the world, why wouldn’t you take it? Your brain processes information while you sleep. It’s the unconscious mind looking at it in a way that you never could while you’re awake. That’s how wonderful your brain is. It does the analysis for you and all you have to do is sleep in the meantime.
7) Trust Your Gut
If you don’t think something is right for you, don’t do it. When you ignore your gut, that is at your own peril. Your instinct is better at picking up unknown clues than you know. Something just doesn’t feel right or something is just off. You can’t quite put your finger in it nor can you explain it. However, it feels wrong.
Your gut is great at picking up clues. In the times that you wanted to trust your gut versus the time when you just went ahead anyway, how many times was your gut right? It’s your intuition speaking to you. Intuition is the most adept at implementing the power of choice. It looks at things you never even considered.
People who are excellent at what they do can’t quite put their finger in what makes them great. Andre Agassi says how his great tennis prowess is due to his wrists. However, when you actually see the footage of his shots, he minimally moves his wrists.
It’s his intuition and the ability to instantly recognize a situation through his gut is what makes him a great tennis player.
8) Don’t Look Back
After you made the power of choice, don’t look back. Forget about the other option at first. See how you feel and completely plant yourself with both feet to the new opportunity. Your best days are ahead of you and you are just about ready to capitalize on it. Give the new opportunity a fair shot before calling it quits.
That doesn’t mean that you can’t reverse the decision. But it does mean that you should give it a fair shot before deciding to go back. Be sure that you are going back because it is the right decision for you. The best way to try something new is to put both feet into it.
Mother birds push their babies off the nest. So the choices are either to fly or to lay flat on their face. That is a great spot to be in. It then tests who you actually are and what you’re made out of. Don’t look back, otherwise bad things will happen. Focus on flying and soaring to new heights.
9) Understand that Your Choices are Powerful
Your choices are what makes up who you are. What kind of person do you want to be? It has more of an impact than you think they do. Everything that you stand up for is because of the choices that you made, are making, and will make in the future. It doesn’t show up today or even tomorrow.
It may show up weeks from today or even months. Don’t brush your teeth and your teeth doesn’t rot after a day. Skip enough times and your teeth will rot to the point you can’t use them. And you need surgery to fix it, not to get to 100% to where you were but just to get close to where you were.
It’s the power of choice. Just as the accumulation of positive choices impact your positive outcomes, the accumulation of negative choices will show up as negative outcomes. What are you going to decide to do? Every day is a new day for you to improve yourself. You have the sole power to change.
Power of Choice: They Matter
The power of choice matter to your overall sense of being and to other people around you as well. You influence your friends more than you know and your friends influence you more than you know as well. One friend recently told me how he remembers I told him working in the debt space is a lucrative decision.
I said it during college, I had no idea he would actually take it to heart. He actually took it to heart. I was surprised and impressed. You never know how much of an impact your choices and words have on your friends around you. They’re listening in and paying attention to what you do.
If they decide to stick around after seeing what you are like and the choices you make, that’s a great thing. It means you have friends who support and love you in the things that you do. Your choices matter in the types of crowd you draw, in the types of people you hang out with. Not just for your life but for other people’s lives.
Will you wilt under criticism or will you go for what you believe in? Will you choose to be bitter or make the right choices to improve your life? Are you hoping that good things happen to you or are you actively seeking out good opportunities? Are you taking control of your life or do you want others to pave the way for you?
It’s all up to you. You have the power of choice. There will be times when you win and there will be times when you lose. It’s inevitable that sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. However, as long as you win as a net positive throughout your entire life, you are doing just fine.
How to Unlock the Power of Choice Shortlist:
- Take your time
- Make a pros and cons list
- Consult others
- Take a choice and make it the right one
- Choose what’s best for you
- Sleep on it
- Trust your gut
- Don’t look back
- Understand that your choices are powerful
Hi David! This is a great article and your story is inspiring! Agreed it is better to take your time, consult others, and do what is best for you. There have been many times in my life where I have chosen what is best for other people or what I thought people would think is best for me. In the long run it is really best to trust your gut even if it is a little risky. Of course balancing any pros and cons is important also! Thanks for the tips of advice!
Thank you Rainbowdolfin! I’m happy to have you here!
Your gut, for some reason, really guides your decision when it matters the most. In the end, it’s your life and you have to do what’s best for you.
I appreciate it!