15 Important Choices You Have to Make in Life

Your life is the sum of the choices you make, even something as small as where you choose to sit in class dictates Who Your Friends end up being. Throughout your life you’ll unknowingly choose the direction you’re going. The goal of this post is to put you face to face with some of the most important choices you’ll have to make before you’re forced to make them.

Having the wisdom to think about these beforehand gives you an incredible advantage in life.

1. Would You Rather Deal with Failure or The Regret of Not Trying at All

You are born with potential, then you get shaped by your family, your education, your environment and the people who you keep close. This molds people in different ways, some cultures encourage risk-taking While others are more conservative. The choice you have to make is what’s more scary failure or regret.

Failure is not something to joke around with, because it can bring public humiliation. It can have repercussions on your livelihood and you only get to fail so many times before you’re unable to play the game anymore. But growth only happens when you stretch your limits.

Something that, we want you to think about is this failure is temporary but regret is permanent. You can always rise up after failure you can learn from it. Use it as a stepping stone to get yourself closer to success, but regret well regret is something that will eat you from within. You’ll carry it with you until the very last day of your life which burden do you wish to carry.

2. Will You Live the Life You Want or The Life Your Parents Want

Now we had to include this one. Every person should choose the life they wish to live. Learn from people who you respect, but don’t let anyone dictate your life because it’s not their life to live.

Why does it matter what your uncle thinks your life should look like. Why does it matter what that low-wage teacher thinks your major should be. Parents would gladly sacrifice happiness and fulfillment for the security of their children without even realizing just how much damage they might be doing.

There’s this quote by Frank Zappa that goes like this, if you end up with a boring miserable life because you listen to your mom, your dad, your teacher, your priest or some guy on television then you deserve it.

 

3. Would You Rather Spend Your Time Growing or Being Entertained

Now this is something you have to deal with every single day. How are you going to spend your time, do you choose to be entertained or educated.

Everyone wants your attention, that’s why the feed never ends and the reals keep coming. The simple distinction between what’s good for you and what’s pure entertainment is enough to make you more aware.

People love of entertainment; celebrities are seen as people of importance and value because they have money. People worship them for their success. But life is built by Builders, you can become one too or you could spend your time glued to the screen not realizing that you are being farmed for Content.

4. Would You Rather Enjoy the Present or Secure the Future

Sometimes the only thing that matters is the present moment. Christmas with your family, walking your dog on a Saturday morning, front row tickets to your favorite artist, catching up with an old friend.

These are moments when you’re creating core memories and then there are moments when you’re actively building and securing your future.

The choice most people make is to live somewhere in between. Many people choose to live somewhere in the middle, they often socialize when they should be working and even when they’re out they are glued to their phones.

They sacrifice the future for that present moment and they ironically are not even that present. You’re always trading with the future my friend it’s up to you to decide what kind of Trades you want to make and what kind of ratio you want to maintain.

5. Do You Want to Work for Others or For Yourself

You can be happy and fulfilled in both situations. The first one comes with security and consistency, while the second one comes with a lot more stress but higher rewards.

It all boils down to what kind of expectations you have for your life. The reason why it’s important to make this distinction is because most people want The Best of Both Worlds. While also not committing to any of them and that’s what leads them into a loop of low job satisfaction and feeling like they’re just a cog and a bigger machine.

That’s how you get people who’ve learned nothing new in the past 5 years and feel stuck. But if you want to live a truly enriching life you need to never stop learning, always compounding knowledge.

6. Do You Want to Be Surrounded by Winners or Losers

You are the average of The Five People You spend most of your time with. If your friends are poor lazy and unfulfilled guess who’s going to join them.

Your inner circle has such a radical impact on the life you live. You only get to realize it once you escape it. The moment you disconnect and can focus on your growth, you’ll start to understand just how unmotivated and boring your life really is.

This works the other way around as well, if you’re accepted by a group of like-minded people who are not afraid to fail. Who are open to learning and investing in themselves these people will spark something within you.

At the end of the day, it’s a choice you have to make. When you think of you and your friend group do you see yourself as winning or doing the exact same thing that you’ve done for the past 10 years.

7. Would You Rather Be Tired or Broke

Everything you do in life will be balanced between these two options. Are you willing to learn and work for it or can you live without it.

Whatever you desire in life from a successful business, to your dream body to the social group and status you aspire to be a part of, it’s all a matter of effort. Nobody’s going to come to your door and offer you the life of your dreams on a platter.

Everything good requires you to sacrifice something in return. The bigger the sacrifice the bigger the reward. You want some cold hard motivational truth here, if you want something and you don’t have it, it’s because you don’t want it enough. Take a moment to ponder this okay until it becomes a part of who you are.

8. Do You Want to Stay in The City You Were Born in Or Move Somewhere Else

Your location is one of the factors with the highest impact on your life. Life in the big city is drastically different from life in a small town. Summers on the seaside are drastically different from Summers up in the mountains. Your hobbies change, the people you hang out with change, the entire Rhythm of Life Changes depending on your location.

One of the most, if not the most important choice you can make for your well-being is the place you call home and people usually make the Choice based on what’s comfortable and easy without any deeper thoughts behind it.

9. Do You Want to Be the Driver or The Passenger in Your Life

Once again, you’re faced with an existential dilemma. There are two ways to live your life. The first way like everything is pre-written in your destiny and you’re just floating by on a boat carrying you wherever that river goes or two the world is chaotic, filled with unlimited potential nothing is set in stone and you’re the one writing every single page.

Now depending on this choice and the way you view life, things get more or less complicated. If you pick the first one there’s no need to struggle or push yourself because Destiny has already been picked out at your birth.

The second one has its downsides as well of course because if your life is terrible, you’re the only person to blame. You take complete ownership of it the good and the bad.

When life is happening to you have to make a call. Are you going to shape the outcome yourself or are you willing to let the dice roll and just see how they fall.

10. Would You Rather Risk It All or Play It Safe

We found there are different character traits that influence the attitude that one has toward life. Some people are calculated and never try to expose themselves to risk, while others embrace it sometimes to their own detriment. Both choose to take action, both want to end up at the same destination which is usually happiness, personal fulfillment and financial success.

What’s different though, about these two is the road they take the higher the risk the shorter the distance to that destination but don’t ever imagine it’s going to be an easy road. On the other hand, there’s this beaten path the one that others have walked on before you and got to exactly the place where you wanted to be.

If you’re smart about it you’ll study these people and prepare for the journey beforehand. If you’re extra smart you’ll get yourself a tour guide someone to show you the way.

11. Are You Going to Have Children or Not

There comes a point in your journey where you start to think about kids. It’s that weird period between 25 and 30, when the majority of your friends are having those children and there’s this weird pressure from society to follow that same path. Here’s where we stand on this issue, do not bring a child into this world if you’re not ready to be a parent at the same time.

If you want kids don’t wait that long either because that Gap and age will make it even more difficult to connect with them later on. Mainly because of that age Gap and the difference in Generations. If you have your first child at the age of 32, which is a completely acceptable and normal age these days by the time they turn 18, you’re 50 years old.

This kid will grow up with VR technology embedded in their contact lenses, connected to the cloud since they were born spending time in Virtual Worlds with their friends. You’re just going to be this old person telling them about the time you installed Snapchat and couldn’t figure out how to use the interface.

12. Will You Ignore the Problem or Will You Deal with It

Help the monster under the bed, the dragon hiding in the closet and that elephant in the room. You should never postpone dealing with these problems, if you have the ability to fix it right now no matter how uncomfortable it might be.

The more you ignore it, the bigger it grows and the more damage it can cause. Be frank about it and just deal with it head-on. People wish that if they ignore it, maybe the problem will just go away but it doesn’t. Ignorance is really expensive. If you ignore the cavity in your teeth, you’ll soon be paying for an implant, if you don’t pay your bills on time you’ll be getting penalties as well ignorance demands interest.

13. Your Life Partner

Statistically speaking the average marriage in the United States only lasts 8.2 years, with a national divorce rate of 41%. Things are pretty similar in the rest of the developed world as well with 35% being widely accepted as a fair ratio globally, which means one in three marriages will statistically end up in divorce.

The partner you have alongside you, will shape the direction you’re heading in. Think of you two in a boat each holding a paddle, if you two aren’t in sync well you’re not moving forward.

14. Do You Want to Serve Yourself or Serve Others

Here’s a moral dilemma for you, what drives Your Existence. If you were laying on your deathbed, did you take more than you gave. What are you leaving behind, how many lives did you change, how many people are better off because you happen to come into existence.

Serve Yourself and do it as well as you can become the most valuable version of yourself that you could ever become. Grow, evolve, be as successful as you can be, then in the second half of your life shares that wealth that knowledge with as many people as you can.

Now this doesn’t mean giving all of your wealth away to charity although there is a case to be made for the giving pledge many billionaires have already joined. Winning is about the positive change you can have in this world.

15. Are You Living or Just Surviving

Many people go through life without enjoying the beauty and Pleasures available. Life isn’t just about paying bills, going on diets and then dying. You have access to the tools and knowledge to change your life for the better to start living. Go through this list again and figure out the choices you’ve made that are holding you back and make it a priority for you to start correcting those.

Final Though

The best time to start was yesterday, the second best is right now. Out of the things we mentioned on this list Which choice will you address immediately. None of this advice will work unless you work yourself. When you’re sitting alone in your room focusing on the things that you’re lacking in life you have the power to change them.

So, start small, start with the choices on this list and make the smallest progress you can today then do it again tomorrow. Do these enough times and you’ll see that life starts to be a lot better more enjoyable and more rewarding.