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.

Does Old Success Adage Still Ring True?

I was challenged last week about the adage Rory Vaden uses in his Take the Stairs program - an adage that has been around the motivational speaking industry longer than Rory or I or any of us, perhaps, have been living. The saying goes "Successful people do what others will not do."

The contention was that people in low-level jobs, such as housekeeping, trash collection, waitresses, etc., do things others will not do and they are not necessarily successful. Very true - but a thought process not necessarily in line with the spirit of the adage. Mass-murderers also do what others will not do, and they wouldn't be considered a success by the world's standards. At the same time, some of these people may perceive themselves as wonderfully successful, depending on their perspective of success - whether they're washing dishes or disposing victims.

The spirit of the adage, in my mind, is "Successful People do things that make them successful that others will not do." Often, we can look at a successful person's life and see that what they've done isn't so far out of our ability to do, but rather out of our comfort zone or the definition of ourselves we've built over the years.

There are two main thoughts that come to me out of the debate I've been having over this issue in my mind.

1. Success is what we define it as, on an individual basis.
2. Success doesn't come from doing from what others won't in every case.

Which leads me to this conclusion:

Succes is reached by those who do what others who haven't achieved that success will not do, regardless of what the definition of success is. Which means we must define success for ourselves, then find what it takes to get there, and do those things. The adage itself works in a very comparative sense that way - if two people are faced with an identical task, and one is willing to work in a way that accomplishes it better than the other, the adage fits well. Even in this case, two people with the same task can accomplish it with equal results in completely different ways, which, rather than disproving the adage merely gives it more channels with which to operate.

What is success to you? Is it based in money? Family? Spiritual meaning? Freedom? Looks? Sex? Joy? Usually its a combination of all of those things and more, to one degree or another. I know I have felt more successful at times when I've made less money and spent more time with my family than the inverse.

Define your own success. Then do what it takes to get there, whether others are doing it or not. In the end, the only one to judge if you are a success or not, and be right, is you.