Don't Think You Have a Choice? Think Again.
Here's what a social neuroscientist has to say about it
My kid has a choose-your-own-adventure book. Remember those? I was obsessed with them when I was young. So is he.
The idea is that you read the story until you hit a point where you have to make a choice. One choice takes you to one page (and one story path) and the other choice takes you to another. It’s always fun to choose differently each time we read it and my kid marvels at the different endings caused by different choices.
When we grow up, though, many of us forget that we have choices.
The hard truth is: We always have a choice.
In fact, our lives are the sums of all of our choices. Whether we like it or not. Don’t like your life? I hate to say it, but you chose it.
You choose which job to take, who to marry, where to live, what to eat, when to wake up, how you spend your money, what you say, and (most importantly) how you view your situation. And often, the small choices you make stack up to create the foundations of what make you who you are today.
Now, I’m not saying that everyone has a bunch of awesome choices laid out in front of them. The choices may not be great. But, there’s always a choice.
I recently rewatched King Richard on a flight. Richard Williams Jr. didn’t have a lot of great choices. He worked all night at a job doing security and cared for his house full of daughters during the day. He could have chose to quit his job, but the consequences (not being able to feed and care for his family) were not exactly what he was willing to accept.
But he did make some choices that led to some pretty fantastic outcomes.
See, many of us don’t believe we have a choice in some matters. But, again, we always have a choice. The options just might not be exactly what we want. And while we don’t often have a choice about how others treat us, we always have a choice as to how we respond.
Michael Inzlicht, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto and the principal investigator at the Toronto Laboratory for Social Neuroscience, has some fascinating theories on self-regulation. One of my favorites is called (appropriately) The Choice Model.
Inzlicht writes that, “choice models posit that self-control is nothing more than the behavioral enactment of some value-based choice (Berkman et al. 2017a, Buckholtz 2015, Neal et al. 2017). According to this view, control is the product of a single valuation process wherein various response options are assigned some subjective value and then a decision about which option to act upon is made through a dynamic integration of these competing values.”
So, basically, it’s a numbers game. It’s likely, on a scale of 1-10, that Richard Williams placed a high value on his family. Probably a 9 or a 10. That value allowed him to continue to choose to work difficult hours and overcome a significant amount of adversity to provide opportunity for his daughters. If, conversely, he had valued family at a 1, he probably would have hopped in his VW bus and driven off into the California sunset.
Similarly, when a person chooses to invest $1,000 instead of spending it on, say, a gaming system, they are probably attributing more value to their future self than their instant gratification. Preparing for the future: 8. Entertainment this weekend: 2.
Even in very extreme circumstances where most human rights and liberties are taken away, humans still have choices.
After spending three years in Auschwitz and Dachau concentration camps during World War II, Viktor Frankl wrote, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.”
Friends, we may not like the plate life has served us at this particular moment in time. In fact, so many things are difficult in today’s world. But don’t fool yourself. You have power.
Like in my kid’s book, you always have the power to choose. And each choice you make, small or large, puts another brick on the foundation of who you are as a person.
Your choices may not always be the best, but you always, always have the power to choose.
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Thank you for reading!
Love,
Michelle