Own Your Step - Family Business Leadership Development and Culture Advisory
Own Your Step - Family Business Leadership Development and Culture Advisory
As an attorney, college instructor and life coach, I have found that choice is what separates us from others. It defines our moods, behaviors and outcomes. This is apparent amongst all individuals, including children, college students and adults. Each person finds himself or herself in situations based off of choice — what separates us from a different outcome is a simple decision.
Students end up on academic probation because their grades are bad. Marriage thrives, or doesn’t, because of the choices of both parties. Juvenile defendants end up arrested, because they break the law. Each has ultimately made a choice that has affected their lives, and they are left cleaning up the mess. Often, we are quick to point fingers and act as if the rest of us are somewhat superior in our decision-making skills, justifying our judgments with a smirk and an explanation on why we turned out better.
But the reality is, we each have made bad decisions-we each have looked choice in the eyes and gone in a direction, once upon a time, that was ill-advised. And more often than not, all that really matters is whether we are in the wrong (or right) place at the wrong (or right) time. People, as a whole, really don’t know what they want. In fact, people make bad decisions every day. The power of choice is likely the greatest (and most dangerous) gift we have. And when faced with many options, we either shy away from making a decision (which is a decision itself) or we make the wrong one. We are influenced by emotion more than reason and intellect, and we stick with what’s comfortable to avoid discomfort.
We wind up in situations that we cannot crawl out of, and when we see others fall in a rabbit hole, we frown and say, “Oh, what pity,” without even realizing that we could be in our own rabbit hole had circumstances caught us at the right moment. People get divorced, and others discuss it as if they have some semblance of understanding of what another is going through. Students fly off to college alone with no support system in place after living under their parents’ sheltered roof for 18 years, and we wonder why they cannot balance school and social life. We buy homes, cars and vacations and find ourselves wondering how we are going to pay it all back. Individuals pursue paths with no idea of what they really want.
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