Are you making the right choices to be successful?

Throughout our lives, we face situations which require us to make choices. Most of these choices can have a huge impact on our life, personally and professionally. Find out how we can ensure we make the right choices at these moments, and be successful.

“Life is a matter of choices and every choice you make, makes you.” - John C. Maxwell

Life provides us opportunities to makes choices every day and at every moment in life. It is solely our decision to make the final choice in every case, and that makes us responsible for the outcome. While everyone makes the choice as per one’s own understanding and perception at that point of time, assuming that it is the best choice, whether it was the best or not, becomes evident only later on when the outcome becomes visible and the impact is felt.

Every small choice one makes today has a long term impact on their future.

As one gets up in morning, there are series of choices one needs to make –

• Whether to get up early or late, thereby giving oneself less or more time to spend before the work routine starts

• Whether to do some physical exercise or just get up at leisure and spend time relaxing

• Whether to just carry out mandatory tasks or take up additional assignments for greater learning and experience

• Even whether to read this article in full to look for some learnings or read with a know-it-all attitude

This is a small list of incidents where one needs to make a choice and the future course of two individuals may turn out significantly different based on the choices made by them.

There’s an old story about two boys who had a father who was an alcoholic and used to make ruckus every day at home. Both of them grew into young men but with very different personalities. One son became an alcoholic while the other became a successful professional. When asked, the alcoholic son shared that “What choice did I have? My father is an alcoholic”. While the other son never touched a drop of alcohol, perused his career and became successful in life with a happy family. When asked, he said “What choice did I have? My father is an alcoholic and look what it did to him and the family”.

“Choices are the hinges of destiny” – Edwin Makham

The challenge is to make the RIGHT choices every time, so that one can be on a life path which is rewarding and full of successes. It is not possible that one is able to make all the right choices: there is always a mix of right, not-so-right and wrong choices, which one makes. The long term success depends on who makes more right choices. People who make more right (say 80%) and less wrong choices (say 20%) are inevitably more successful in life as compared to those who choose the other way round.

It is important to recognize that there is no absolute right or wrong in most cases. What is right for one may not be right for other. At the same time, there could be ample opportunities to learn from others' behavior. Cognitive dissonance is a powerful motivator which plays an important role in making choices. When we see other people behave differently compared to our beliefs, we receive conflicting thoughts, leading to dissonance. Sometimes strong dissonance also results in shifting of beliefs, thereby significantly changing our choices.

There is no absolute right choice - the key is to make the right choice based on one's personal traits, strengths, and weaknesses.

There is a tendency towards generalizing and forcing/advising people around us based on the experience of other successful people. If Mike is good in studies and decides to take up medicine as career, it is not necessary that the same will be right choice for Joe as well. It has been observed that parents often force their children to do some things, quoting an example of their friends' child and comparing them all the time. This results in making wrong choices and leads to poor outcomes. Everyone is born with different traits, strengths, and weaknesses which are not in anyone’s control. But one can make a big difference in final outcomes by making the right choices during their life journey.

“Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well.” – Robert Louis Stevenson

Many times, one is not able to make right choice, as it is generally based on what is perceived to be most comfortable, convenient, or takes least effort. On the contrary, most of the time, right choices are more difficult to pursue, require more effort and often may have low probability of success. Therefore, there is a need for the individual to break the comfort zone, which otherwise feels very nice to preserve. This is where the strong mindset and right attitude of the person makes the difference.

Having understood all these aspects, the question arises: what should one do to avoid suboptimal choices and emerge as a winner by making series of right decisions? In fact, the journey of life provides a series of opportunities for continuous learning, which makes a person sharper in making right choices. However, it will be useful to internalize some principles, which will help in this process -

Always start with end in mind –

Stephen Covey mentions in his bestseller The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People that a very important habit is to “Begin with the End in Mind.” Normally, there is a tendency to put too much emphasis on immediate pleasures and end up trading them off for long term superlative outcomes. This is also termed as hyperbolic discounting, where one ends up choosing immediate benefits in short term, ignoring larger gains in the long term. This approach could be highly counterproductive in long run. Therefore, it is critical to keep the end in mind while deciding on the available options, which is a powerful thought process and can help people make the right choices. The idea is to visualize the end of current task, current year, career or life in mind, and then decide on the immediate choice option, keeping in view its likely short as well as long term impact.

Unconscious Thought Theory –

While it is easy to make immediate choices in most of the routine matters, in relatively complex situations, it is advisable not to rush to a decision. According to Unconscious Thought Theory (UTT), in simple terms, it is accepted that conscious mind is good at making choices involving few decision variables, but in complex matters, it is the unconscious mind which is more powerful in doing so. We also hear the phrase ‘’sleep over it’’ – which is actually giving time to the unconscious mind to work on the decision making process and help an individual in making the right choice. In case of complex situations, it will therefore, be a good idea to gather all related information about the matter under consideration and take some time before making any choice, during which unconscious mind may help in giving perfect direction. In fact, I have personally used this technique many times, and have always come out with a better choice.

It’s never too late –

It is said that Warren Buffett accrued nearly 90% of his net worth of around $80 billion after the age of 65. Never mind if you have made some wrong choices and got certain setbacks in the past. Even if one has made a series of wrong choices, thereby suffering repeated setbacks, it is important not to lose trust in oneself for making right choices in the future. It happens with everyone in different proportions and one needs to take it in a stride, maintaining a positive attitude. Self-image and self-confidence is critical to maintain appropriate mind-set which enables a proper thinking process.

Setbacks are the best opportunities for deriving some meaningful learnings. The attempt should be that the skill of making right choices gets sharpened with every decision made. It is important to carry the belief that some right choices at any stage of life can catapult one to stardom, writing off multiple failures of past.

Doing copy-paste is a waste –

Every person is different and what may be right for someone, may not be right for you. Identify your strengths, weaknesses, areas of interest, priorities, passion and then make the right choice for yourself. This may be different from your very close friend but still be the right choice. It is important to understand the process of cognitive dissonance and use it in a positive manner for making right choices.

Break your comfort zone –

The first instinct is to make a choice which requires less effort, easy to do and so on. Waking up at scheduled time in morning for doing some exercise, is the biggest act of discomfort that gets compromised many times. The more comfortable choice of sleeping for another 30 minutes takes over. This is just an example, but as a rule of thumb, the right choice is the one which is more difficult and forces you to exert more, thereby bringing you out of the comfort zone. At the beginning of my career, I worked in an organization for more than 10 years, doing very well in a safe and rewarding environment, getting good recognition on regular intervals. At one stage, I started feeling that I could do more but am getting into my comfort zone, significantly compromising my potential. I decided to come out of it knowing that the transition is going to be quite challenging, demanding and unstable…which it was. It took almost 5 years, 2 different organizations and lot of hard work to get into next orbit of success and I never looked back.

The extent and impact of every choice made during the course of one's life is significantly different. Some routine decisions may not make much of a difference in the long run, while some critical decisions may have a life changing impact. At major milestones in life, like choosing study a stream during school, prioritizing focus on studies or an alternate career, deciding which college to join for graduation, which branch of education to pursue, organization to join, career path to take and career changes to make – it would be extremely critical to make right choice, as these can hugely impact future course positively as well as negatively. A professional help at these critical stages could add great value.

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