The beginning boxers on “Mike Tyson’s Punchout” were easy to defeat.
As we leveled up, so did the challenge of the opponent we faced.
In life, we have the choice to play on the level we want. The harder levels bring their own obstacles but the rewards tend to be of greater value to us.
Do we go for the easy win or challenge ourselves with the more difficult pursuits?
Which level we are choosing to play on is a useful question to ask ourselves often.
Some people slow down running toward 1st base.
Others run full speed straight through the bag.
Knowing who we are can inform us where we are starting from. It doesn’t mean we can’t change if we want to.
We’re only one decision away from changing the entire trajectory of our future.
Not a hundred decisions.
Just one.
The next one is all that matters.
When we are growing up we have a tendency to want more.
What is hard to understand in those formative years is that the “more” we crave adds unnecessary responsibility and stress to our lives.
Unfortunately, we carry this into adulthood.
We think we want:
Inevitably, there comes a time when most of us realize we have it backward all along.
What we really want is:
The person with the most “toys” doesn’t win. It’s because they’ve lived a life always wanting more and were never grateful for all they had in the first place.
They were never grateful for the important things:
If we are looking to become happier these become a great place to start.
Life has many small forks in the path. We never can know which direction will lead to which future state so we have to rely on the energy we feel, the knowledge we have, and the intuition that has guided us before.
We have to rely on our “in the moment” decision-making and not hesitate when the answer is clearly in front of us.
We have to have confidence and conviction that this is the right thing to do even when the butterflies are sending our body into an unknown spiral of emotions.
That’s the feeling we want to have.
It helps us know it’s the right one.
It helps us trust the direction the compass is steering us.
The decision isn’t that hard anymore.
The fork in the road becomes much clearer to navigate.
If we haven’t defined what “happiness” means to us then how can we be sure we are making the right choices to lead us to a happier life?
Happiness is the result of consistent decisions that are aligned with our virtues, values, and vision for our life.
Seeking happiness is irrelevant if we don’t have a clearer direction on which way to go.
If we are looking for a place to start that might not be a bad first step.
When we’re young we are told that if we make bad choices we could end up in jail.
What is never explained, however, is that while we may not end up in a physical jail for committing a crime, our decisions could lead us into a “mental jail” that might be just as bad, in some cases.
We feel stuck
We feel stressed
We wonder how we got here
We are in a situation that seems impossible to get out of.
But there is a way.
It’s difficult and it might take time but it starts with a choice.
A choice to change.
Just like the choices we’ve made that didn’t work out and got us into this situation, we can make new choices to lead us out of it.
We can recalibrate the compass and move in a different direction.
The choice to change becomes our “get out of jail free” card.
Having the courage to change ultimately determines whether we use it or not.
“The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step”
But what is that “step”?
It is not necessarily a physical one at all.
It’s more mental.
It’s a thought or an idea.
It’s a maddening power that has taken over our minds.
We can’t stop thinking about it and it haunts our every move.
The journey of a thousand miles, we might argue, begins with a decision.
We have two paths in front of us. One leading down the route to pursue this idea further and one suppressing it and smoldering the flame.
It’s a choice.
It’s a decision that ends up making a thousand more decisions for us.
The question becomes a simple one then.
Which path are we going to venture down today?
All of these questions have an answer.
Why do we argue?
Why do we fight?
Why do we turn a blind eye to someone in need?
Why do we make an unethical decision?
Why do we talk down to ourselves?
Why are we never enough?
It’s whether we have the courage to do the work to find out that ends up being the most important question of all.
When we make that commitment then we can tackle the situation head-on and be prepared to make the best of it. We can stop rationalizing after the fact.
Understanding ourselves is a challenging process but if we are willing to start from the beginning and take one step forward then we might be encouraged to keep going.
The benefits to a happier and positive life are astronomical but we have to be willing to start with the first question. “Am I ready?”
A big difference between kids and adults is that kids are willing to be silly and carefree with a very short view into the future. They aren’t thinking too far ahead which allows them to live in the moment.
Adults are always looking around and wondering who is watching before they can normally let go and be themselves. We get crippled by a cloud of fear that we create over ourselves.
Instead of telling our kids what to do maybe, we should take a page out of their playbook and just throw the whole playbook out.
Be spontaneous.
Be silly.
Live in the moment.
If we wait on others then we may be waiting a long time.
We must have the courage to forge the path ourselves and can’t hold up our journey for others that aren’t ready to begin.
Press on and lead. The journey can be lonely at times.
But sometimes we’ll be out in front, dropping the breadcrumbs to help others behind us. If there are others that live a similar ethos then they will soon travel along with us.
We might need to be the leader that they’ve been looking for. They might not have the courage that we’ve already formed.
All we can do is write our own story one day at a time and be a guiding light for others who may need it.
We can’t push them to travel along with us.
That’s always their choice.
Just like venturing out alone is always ours.
It takes us until we become adults to realize just how hard it is to be a kid.
Kids rarely have free choice.
They have to go to school.
They have a specific bedtime.
They may have to eat their veggies.
They may have to play a sport they don’t like.
Rarely can they buy things that make them happy without approval.
The list goes on.
It should make us wonder then, why we complain so much as adults.
We can choose where we work and what we do
We can determine who we want to be around
We can choose the activities that excite us
We can choose what we eat and when we eat it.
We can choose a lot of things. We can choose to complain or choose to be happy.
It doesn’t switch overnight but we can make decisions to lead us in either direction.
The significant part about being an adult is that we have the choice.
That’s also the hard part, too.
Advice can be helpful if we understand the background of the person giving it, how much they know about us, and their intent.
Those are some of the lines we should draw on how much impact that advice has on our decisions. We can use the advice to help form our decisions or ask more questions but don’t necessarily have to take it verbatim especially if we aren’t sure of the credibility of the source.
Having agency in seeking out our own answers to unfamiliar questions by doing our own research can give us confidence in the decisions that we make. We don’t always need to take advice from others and, in fact, it can be used to slow down our decision-making process altogether.
Sometimes using our ability to problem solve ends up being the best route we can take when we are making decisions.
