Life decomposed to choices¹

I’ve always found that the road not taken is an incredible poem. It’s a story about a man who had to make a choice, something that all of us do. Our lives are no different. We make choices at every second and they lead us to where we are right now. At each point in my chain of choices, I had several options, and each decision altered my reality, sometimes slightly, sometimes significantly. Some choices are microscopic, very tiny, and minor. We make these choices every day. Other choices are bigger and hold more influence on our reality.

Micro-choices versus macro-choices

We can see the effects of the macro changes more rapidly than the micro choices, but we’re still making choices. A mistake we make is that we undervalue the micro-choices and overvalue the macro ones. It is easy to see why we do it but in many respects this mentality harms our lives.

For instance, when it comes to the choice of going to the gym or not, if we pick the right micro choice enough times consistently, we will have made a lot of progress on our lives, more so than even a macro decision taken. In fact, we need to be focusing on the right micro choices more because they’re so easy to miss. With time, the good micro choices stack and become our foundation and new roads become available to us that may have been invisible before.

Taking the idea of life divided into a series of choices further, a singular life can be mechanically boiled down to a concept studied in computer science called binary trees².

The circles are called nodes and we begin at 1. Then we make a decision and end up somewhere either 2 or 3. And this process continues, until we end up at one of the nodes at the bottom: the final point. We can decompose our lives from the current moment all the way to the point we were born, and at a high level identify the choices that have made us. It is a fascinating way to look at life and shows us all the decisions we made: right or wrong.

Why life is so confusing

The only way to judge the rightness or wrongness of a decision is how much closer or further it brought us to our true goals. Let’s say I wanted to be a painter in my life and the actions I take on the daily are –

go to school, come back, watch anime, study biology, apply to medical school, and become a doctor

These decisions have been wrong at all junctions and have taken us to a place where we did not originally want to be.

However, the confusion we’re presented with is that nobody knows for sure whether what they did was good or bad. If I’d picked the actions to be a painter, we have no way of telling if I’d have been unemployed for a long time, would’ve had no financial stability, or if I’d have made it big time and become a famous multi-millionaire. We cannot say for certain and this ambiguity kills us inside.

The fact of life is that we never have any idea which road leads where. If we did, everyone would pick the best roads all the time. Regret would cease existing and the number of self-help book/melancholy songs would be a big stinking zero. However, reality is different and unfortunately no one can prophesize³.

Making excellent choices

If I wanted to end up at node 27 yet I decided to go down node 2, I’m shit out of luck, aren’t I? In slightly less nerdy terms, if I suddenly have the desire to want to be a lawyer 6 years into a medical degree, what now? In the road not taken, the narrator is lucky that he picked a road, less travelled, but it led to a destination he liked and was fortunate he had reached. Not all of us are that lucky. Sometimes the roads we pick are the wrong ones and, unbeknownst to us, we reach some place years down the line and realize

“Oh. Back then I had an opportunity to pick the right road. But I didn’t”

That’s all we can do. So with our limited vision, what can we do? What’s the right way to decide how to act to reach where we want? Logically speaking, it’s simple enough, but to live the plan through is another matter entirely.

The 4 horsemen of decision making

It seems to me that there are several steps to making better choices, more consistently.

Know thyself

Know ourselves and what we truly want. Peel back the layers of our mind until we know for sure what we want to do. This is the most difficult step and could perhaps take an entire lifetime. Dana White has famously said that when you figure out who you are and what you want to do manifestation becomes real. I never used to think what I wanted and am shocked that I never did. I just did things, dazed and confused. Most of my life was like a hazy hangover after a long night out. I went through the motions, and did not live life consciously towards an end goal, a desired end state. No wonder I felt slightly unhappy and not authentically myself.

Once we’re able to pick a street, we have a target to hit and the rest of the steps become easier and natural. Once I decided that I wanted to be fitter, everything else fell into place. When I decided that I wanted to change schools, things became radically clearer. Aimlessness and floating around is what we want to avoid. We want to keep moving, even if we don’t know where we’re going because we have the highest probability of stumbling onto what we truly want, even if we didn’t know that before.

Make actions atomic

Break down what we want into atomic, bite-sized pieces. Know every step along the way. Know where we are and where we want to reach. Read, research, and come up with answers as to what is needed at every stage, in depth. Know whether each step brings you closer or further, is in line with the goal or not.

Live a consistent life

Live a life that resembles the life of someone who has already achieved the goal. After step 1, we should end up with an archetype of a person who has already taken the road which we want to end up in. We should know what this person does on the daily and the mindset they hold. You have to live in accordance to this and do the same things they do, effectively copying both the micro and macro forks.

No ragrets

Be okay with whatever road you have picked. Once we are already walking the road, we have to make the best of it. Yes, we can walk back to the point of diversion and pick the other road but that is going to take time and there is no certainty that it’s going to be all you expect it to be.

We can choose to be a civil engineer instead of a financial analyst 3 years into our Finance major. Yes, we’re going to have to live with the sacrifices of that, namely, a bunch of lost time, money, hard work learning something totally new, being unemployable for a while, and feeling stressed out. But we can do it, if our desire is larger than all these negatives. Alternatively, if we find that the negatives trump our desire, we can be comfortable with whatever road we’re on and make the best out of it. We could choose to be the best damn civil engineer of all time.

Regret and picking the right choices

Regret is a big thing that holds back people. The sting of regret is horrible. It’s that retrospective speculation about how things could have been different if we’d just had the sense to pick differently. But regret is one of the most useless emotions because it doesn’t affect reality a bit.

We can spend years saying shoulda, woulda, coulda but it doesn’t change a damn thing. Yet, it’s a very common shower thought when you’re thinking back to all your missed opportunities from adulthood. So what to do about this? We have too many important choices to make in the course of our lives. How can we best insulate ourselves from the sting of regret? 

The following items should be a good way to make sure you never feel regret. The single most powerful thing that’ll shield us is self-awareness. At all times. Non-obliviousness. Making non-awareness the primary thing we’re fighting against. The reason why it’s so powerful is that it allows us to honestly, impartially know where we are, what we’re doing, where we want to go, and whether our actions support that or not. It reduces our ego to a minimum. How can one be egoistical when you are totally self-aware and see that you’re not doing what you said you’d do?

The ego trap

I am no stranger to an ego because I did have one in the past. Though I was convinced I didn’t, funnily enough, all that the conviction did was ensure I did have one. Recognizing this fact, I’ve made some progress and now I think: having an ego in this big world is impossible. Whatever it is that you’re doing, on Earth, where 100 billion people have existed, how sure are you that you’re doing better than everyone?

It is highly unlikely given that right now, on this planet, there are people like Bill Gates, John Mayer, and Stephen King walking around. Right here. They’re not where you are, but they’re there. So how is an ego in anything possible? It seems incredible to me now. A true feat of the human mind. In my case, I was arrogant about little things and would argue against my elders. I now see that it was pure arrogance, given that my elders passed every phase of life I had lived. Wrong move, pal.

Reducing our egos opens our minds enough that we start thinking: 

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Learning and developing an identity

So now what? We don’t know it all.. How do we at least begin learning? We learn by keeping our minds open and listening to different people and hear perspectives. Books, interviews, studying the lives of great people, listening to your parents and family, interacting with people from different areas, doing some solitary thinking, are all fair game. And if we’re lucky, we encounter good ideas that light up our worlds, fresh ideas akin to little fireflies which brighten the darkness of something we’re unfamiliar with. We become accepting of these fireflies and not shoo them away like we used to before. 

Radical open-mindedness

Being in this mentality where we’re being accepting of all ideas instead of judging them is what being a good listener is. Passing judgement as if we have the wisdom and the position to do that is what closes our minds. Though bad ideas exist, and we may encounter things we disagree with during this exercise of radical open-mindedness, we are trying not to judge here. You can listen to things without judgement, without accepting or rejecting them. We’re just trying to be aware of the viewpoints that exist in the world.

This means we will naturally begin to gravitate towards certain ideas and concepts. This is where the mysteriousness of people begins to work. Different people find different things interesting and worth exploring more. The same happens to us and we are attracted to those things we hold curiosity about. This happens enough and we start to develop a personality with a character.

When we speak of people with personalities, they’re typically people who know themselves thoroughly. You may have a friend who knows a lot about soccer, or a family member who is the cook. These people, if they’re genuinely following their own interests, are being authentic to their interests and getting to know themselves more and more through the roads they’re walking.

Building a good character

This opens up opportunities to build a good character as well, when we cross paths with other people walking the same road. We will hear opinions of people at this point who may or may not be walking the same path as you. But before judging these opinions, you remember the deal you made with yourself to be radically open-minded. You may hear conflicting viewpoints and it becomes important to weigh the opinions of other people depending on whether they have walked your desired road or not. Finally, you have to remember to focus on the way it is versus the way it seems because people will offer all kinds of advice, some of which may not focus on truly what you need to do but only on the what it seems you may need to do. It is less about judging and more about discerning.

We make it easier to be a good, non-judgemental listener by remembering that our interactions with the world are opportunities to leave behind a good impression and legacy, so at the end of the day, at least we’re able to sit back and say, “Me coming to the world affected at least this person or that person in a good way. There has been a good utility to my existence”. Being open-minded and listening not only lends a friendly ear to anyone who needs it but also offers us the best chance to learn new things, so why not try to be a good listener? 

Do difficult things

The final piece to never feeling regret would be to not shy away from doing difficult things. This is because the mind is a tricky beast that puts comfort over everything else. However, there is no growth in comfort. The reason why we grew the most in our schooling days, grade 1 through 12, more than any other time in our lives is because we were going through something difficult every single day, whether we wanted to or not. If it’s a school day, we’re going to school, no questions about it. Your feelings don’t matter or at least are placed in the back burner. We act against our mind, which keeps whispering sweet pleasantries. We choose work, whether it be learning music theory, going to jiu jitsu class, or doing your homework.

Why? Because you chose this road and the road demands this of you. You must do it. Even if your feelings are screaming bloody murder. You have to be self-aware, reduce your ego, know yourself, be authentic, speak your mind, and do difficult things.

The Markov Property

Sometimes, no matter how prepared we are, we make the wrong choices at times and it can be difficult to react to them. In those instances, we have to remember the Markov Property: the future is independent of the past given the present. This is a mathematical property that holds true in probability theory: when a system depends on random processes, arrival at a future state depends on the present state rather than the events that have preceded it.

I’ve found this property to be profound ever since I encountered it in my senior year Artificial Intelligence class. This is because the property holds true philosophically, not just mathematically. In life, a series of choices can be made in the now which can offset any wrong decision already taken. If I failed my exam in the past, I can double down and study super hard for the next test, so the future will be independent from the past.

Life is a series of randomized events and few of those directly depends on each other, which makes change doable. We can walk back from a wrongly picked path and choose a better road. Sure, we have wasted some time and we’re going to have to live with that but at least we won’t continue along the generic tree of life and look back 10 years later at a spot where we definitely did not want to be.

Few choices in life are truly permanent

The argument is that our choices aren’t as permanent as we think them to be and, if we look at our life as the series of choices we’ve taken, we become more aware of the choices we’ll make tomorrow and whether or not they’ll lead us where we want to be. This is one of the benefits of life being long. We can make the right choices starting today.

This has to be one of the strongest mindsets that’ll protect you against feelings of regret because the power is always on our hands. It’s not easy to change and decide to be better but the plain fact that we can is very motivating. Even if we tried our best to make the right choices and failed, we have the present in our hands always to make sure we pivot the direction we’re walking and make sure that where we end up is different than where we have been in the past. After all…

“It ain’t where I’ve been but where I’m about to go”

Jay Z – I just wanna love you

The domino effect of choices

There’s also the domino effect to talk about. Looking at the binary tree picture again, the reason why we’re able to reach one of the nodes at the bottom – for example node 19 – is because we chose node 2 in the very beginning. The rest just happened naturally as a process of having picked a road and being committed to it.  To visualize this, let’s talk about how I came to study in the US.

In my life, I never thought that I would study internationally or specifically in the US. It just kind of happened. The only thing I really wanted to do was go to a new school. Little did I know, this school specifically trained students to apply to universities abroad. Some things are invisible to us until we encounter them. It is only when get on a path and follow it that a right turn several miles further becomes visible to us. One thing leads to another and suddenly we have climbed a little hill which we never set out to climb.

In my experience, a lack of clarity and awareness contributed a lot to this happening, so you should definitely avoid that and have full fledged awareness of your choices throughout the day. However, it is still a mesmerizing thing that may happen to you because, even with full self-awareness, you can never predict what roads become available in the future.

The world is such a dynamic system where things are happening all the time.

One day you’re just practicing your acoustic guitar and uploading your videos to YouTube and the next day you’re Justin Bieber. 

Making the first domino fall

A little action can domino into several other actions until quite a large effect can take place, especially in a complex system like life, with its many interconnected webs, one thread connecting to another in a very unfathomable way. Motivating as this may be, sometimes it can just be very difficult to start making the right choices after a long time of picking either nothing or the wrong choices, but this is a decision we need to make if we want our lives to come to a better place.

The first steps will be especially hard because of all the accrued negative momentum of inaction, but it gets better every single day we do the action we have to do. After all, if negative momentum is such a force to be reckoned with, who’s to say that positive momentum isn’t? And for positive momentum to build, one must act every single day, lay another brick in the wall. One step at a time. To ensure we do this smoothly, we must not put huge expectations on our heads and focus more on consistency rather than intensity. Consistent actions to build our momentum and let the dominoes hit the floor.

Overcoming laziness

David Goggins calls it “callusing your mind”. Steven Pressfield calls it “Resistance”. This is what separates the people who achieve their goals versus those who don’t and is something that I’m personally struggling with right now. I am not unique here as most people struggle with this. How do we fight against the resistance, bite the bullet, and start callusing our minds? Some days it feels like a ton of bricks are weighing down on you, preventing you from taking those steps forward. 

It seems to me that the way forward is to:

1. Love your craft so much that you can’t bear to not practice

2. Develop your will to a level where your future self takes priority over any unpleasantness during the present

Having either of these would work. Having both would be ideal. Kobe Bryant probably had both.

Conclusion

This life is a tricky beast. We know it’s all we’ve got. We’ve seen countless people leave this place, never to return, yet this tremendous fact often does not press us into action everyday. We get lulled into the slowness of every day and doing the same actions: brush your teeth, go to work, go back home and eat dinner, etc. This lulls us into a deep sleep, unaware that every second trapped in a situation we don’t want to be in can and should be avoided.

Our one life is the most precious thing we have. If we strive to keep this fact into the forefront of our every waking hour, I don’t have any doubts that we will try our hardest to be our best version and make the right choices at every junction. Given that our time is limited here, we will also keep the pangs of regret under control and more importantly never allow it to even enter our consciousness. This seems the best way to live and I hope I can follow my own words. I am not a physician but I will try to heal myself; I recommend you to do the same. I will end this piece with a quote I’ve loved since watching the movie Troy.

1. I don’t have things figured out. In fact, I have only recently started to see how much I need to evolve and be better. I have miles to walk in regards to open-mindedness and conscientiousness. I have a lot to see and hear before I can claim to know anything at all. But this blog post is just a series of ideas I’ve come to by analyzing my own life and mistakes. Having these ideas drilled into my brain when I began would have (probably) taught me to avoid certain behaviors that led to misery and not achieving my goals. If it is even 1% helpful to someone, I have achieved my goal and that’s all I care about. Like UFC fighter Michael Chandler says, see you at the top ↩︎
2. Of course, life is more complex than this and a more adequate example would be a generic, N-ary tree, where every node has multiple children. This is because, in life, at any moment we have an infinite number of choices we could be taking. However, to keep the example simple and easy to understand, let’s continue with life being a binary tree ↩︎
3. I am hoping that this is a word but the red squiggly lines underneath are bashing my hopes to pieces ↩︎