Is Choice a Decision, or an Action?

by Stephen Barnett

Three frogs are sitting on a log. After an 3 long hours in the sun, one decides to jump off. How many frogs are left?

The answer to this age old question posed by motivational speakers everywhere is, of course, three. A decision isn't the same as an action. Which poses, to me, as The Champion of Choice, another question - is Choice a decision, or an action?

A Choice, in my estimation, is a selection - an order of sorts. We choose what we want off a menu, and order it. Initially we decide, but until we Choose, we don't get the results we decided upon. I may decide I want a hamburger, but if I don't choose to tell the wait staff, my decision remains the same but my choice is silence and hunger. 

The Secret Movie is often derided for its "Wish and You Will Attract it into Your Life" philosophy, illustrated by the boy wishing for a bike, and the girl desiring a necklace, immediately followed by each getting their desire. What it doesn't show, and presumably doesn't even believe, is the actions taken by the recipients, or the people around them, to make those wishes come true.

It may FEEL like enough: "I wrote down my 6 month, 12 month, and 5 year goals - wow, that was tough", "I know I want the Mercedes-Benz, not the Cadillac, now that I've done all the research and test-driven both", or even "I have had it, I am ending this relationship/job/bad habit" - all can come with a bit of an adrenalin rush of satisfaction for finally verbalizing or writing it out for all to see. Heck, the motivational experts themselves tell us to let the world know, to write stuff down, to know our goals.

It may FEEL like enough, but it's not. How many of us have reams of notebooks filled with goals we've never fulfilled? One of the jokes I used to use in my speeches was "I'm a great goal setter - my goal for losing weight gets bigger every year!"

Frankly, it's not even necessary. We take successful action all the time without goals in mind. Results may not always be what we want, but we are capable of action every second. The retail world thrives on impulse decisions/choices, from candy bars to tinted windows and titanium hubcaps. But action successfully taken is not the same as directed action.

We can have decisions that sit inert without actions, and actions with a variety of results without clear decision driving them. At the end of the day, a lack of acting on decision OR choice is a decision/choice in an of itself. The Choice is an action, but it is not enough.This is, in general, how the average human lives most of their life, letting their Choices of NOT choosing create their environment.

Perhaps this is just a battle of semantics, and I should be just as happy to call myself the Duke of Decision. But for my intents and purposes, Choice = Decision + Action. 

We can Choose our results, by deciding what they are and taking action on them - Choosing them, plucking them off the shelf ourselves, putting in the order to the kitchen, and jumping off the log to our next destination. Decision and Action must work together to create Choices that build our Self-Defined Life.

Time to jump.