Have you ever looked around at your life and asked yourself, “How the hell did I get here?”
If you have, consider this: You got there by choice.
The choices that landed you there may not have been well thought out choices. They may not even have been proactive
choices (as that Rush song says, “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice”). But still, they were choices.
Sure, external events and circumstances happen over which we have no control, but even then we have a choice about what to do with it.
Mary Allen has a thought-provoking blog post looking at what she describes as the compounding effect of choice. Much like earning compounded interest on your money, the cumulative results of the choices you make pile on top of each other and create a compounded effect.
As she describes it, there are two main principles at work here:
Principle #1
“It is the simple disciplines (choices), that don’t seem to make any difference at all in the moment; HOWEVER repeated over time, the compounded affect makes all the difference in the world.”
Principle #2
“It is the simple errors in judgment, that don’t seem to make any difference at all in the moment; HOWEVER repeated over time, the compounded affect makes all the difference in the world.”
And lacking that perspective is exactly where people get in trouble. If you don’t have that compounded long-term view, the small choices seem fairly insignificant. But over the course of time they can have an enormous impact.
Mary shows a graph illustrating the effect of those choices, leading as she puts it to either Mastery or Mediocrity. That binary view yields an easy way to evaluate the choices we make. “If I made this choice repeatedly over time, would it lead me to mastery or mediocrity? Would it lead me to fulfillment or frustration?”
If you’re like most people, you’re making many of those choices on autopilot. And that’s good news, because the simple act of consciously asking that question consistently opens the door to a ready source of positive change.
TRY THIS: For the next week, notice the choices you’re making. They might be choices about how you interact with a loved one, how you eat, how much time you spend working, how you spend your free time, or any one of a bazillion other choices you make on an ongoing basis.
At the end of the day, scan back at the choices you made. Write them down as a list. Then go through them and ask that binary question. “Repeated over time, would this choice take me toward the life I want to create, or away from it?”
You don’t need to make any changes at this point. This is just an exercise in noticing. You might find that the changes come automatically. If they do, fine, but don’t make that the focus.
You create an energized life one choice at a time. And there’s no better time to start than right now.
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