If You Could Choose Your Future, Would You?

The choices you make today are the life you’ll life tomorrow.

Believe it or not, there is a science behind successful thinking. If we ask any successful person we’ll usually find the same answer—“the way I achieved success is by going after it.” So what does “going after it” really mean? Can anyone just “go after” what they want and achieve it? The quick answer is YES, but hold on, don’t just run out the door because there’s a little more to it.

A better life, no matter how you define it, is not something reserved for the wealthy or the lucky or even those special enough to be worthy of it. A better life is available for anyone who wants to make the choices that will result in such a life. Choices. Every day each of us make literally hundreds, if not thousands, of choices that result in our lives. We choose to become frustrated in traffic, we choose to yell and complain, we choose to sit, stand, eat, buy, think and do. Most of the time we don’t even realize we’re making choices that affect our lives, but we are.

Too many people today tend to live in the past regretting a future that hasn’t even happened yet. They regret what they haven’t accomplished, fear even the slightest risk, hate their circumstances and focus only on how far their dreams of a better life really are. These are normal, every day people who find life difficult and unsatisfying and just can’t seem to make that turn in life that moves them toward better results.

For most, the dream of a better life will remain a dream not because they don’t have what it takes to succeed, but because they simply don’t understand how it works. Success, in anything, is fundamentally and scientifically a matter of choices. Success has little to do with luck or money or education and everything to do with how we think of our choices.

Dr. Edward Nuhfer, Professor of Geosciences at California State University, posits that with each experience, regardless of how small, our brains build neural pathways that are then and later used as conduits for our thinking processes. Further, these neural pathways are built as either success-oriented (can do) branches or failure-oriented branches. This building of branches or neural pathways becomes our mental programming. Therefore, if throughout our lives we build too many pathways that are failure oriented, it would be difficult for us to believe that we can achieve success. It’s as if we program ourselves to fail, to not take risks, to not believe in ourselves.

Success-oriented people have a predominantly success-oriented programming. These are people who have experienced, through choosing, a successful life even in the smallest ways. Success-oriented people have no problems making choices that could result in a better life. They wouldn’t think twice about picking up the phone and calling the CEO of a huge corporation or taking the first steps to start a business. Success-oriented people understand through experience that the result of a small step, such as a phone call, question or meeting has little to do with their overall success and that it’s the step itself that keeps the success machine moving forward. They know that simply because the phone call didn’t work out, the successful outcome of the call was not as critical as the completed call itself—this is why they achieve more. They feel successful having made the call regardless of the call’s outcome. This type of thinking results in more steps more often and, therefore, more success.

It’s all about how we program our minds to think of the small steps. Success is a result of action and action is a result of a lack of illusionary mental obstacles. There are simply too many examples of people who’ve made it to enormous success without education, skill or money to discount the concept of success-oriented thinking. The problem is that our culture tends to program us from even birth to think, “we can’t” rather than “how can we?”

Small choices that we make all day and every day are the key to change. Someone wanting to lose weight, for example, cannot “choose” to be thin. There is no choice that results in “thin”. Choices such as pulling your hand back from reaching for that cookie, opening the door and walking instead of opening the refrigerator door, reading an article on fitness and health are all choices that result in “thin”. The key, then, is to focus on the right now, the choices one can make at the moment that tend even slightly toward one’s goal. If you want to be fit, then, don’t “decide” that you’ll be thin, choose a step toward it.

How many of us decided one evening to start a “new life” the next day, only to find our motivation fade away into a sea of excuses when the time came? Decisions produce nothing; choices right now are the backbone of results. Anyone can choose his way to a better life. The choices are there to make. Whether we choose to choose or choose to do nothing, the reality is that we have chosen. So why then not choose something that might lead toward success rather than leave our lives to simple chance. If you want your life to change start moving, take a step. It is the choices we make today that are the life we’ll live tomorrow.

Rudy Ferraro, author, motivational speaker and life coach.
Author of Choose Your Way There—
The choices you make today are the life you’ll live tomorrow.
www.chooseyourwaythere.com