To those graduating from high school or college, congratulations!
I thought I’d take this opportunity to pass along a few thoughts I wish I had considered when I was of graduating age. In other words, this is completely unsolicited advice. As with most advice, you often get what you pay for, so keep that in mind.
Thesis: Cumulative small choices compound to shape our larger life-options and ultimately our character.
Adults often tell students that life does not have multiple-choice exams.
They are wrong.
Life is in fact a series of multiple choices.
The difference is, you must ask the questions yourself, understand your available options, reason through outcomes, and then rely on both logic and intuition to choose the best path forward (logic is almost always the better mode to make optimal decisions, but in some cases, intuition outperforms logic). You’ll also need pragmatism to realize that sometimes life’s momentum advances in shades of gray, without a single best answer, just different vectors toward the next available questions.
Truth: the direction of your life hinges on the summation of seemingly small, multiple-choice decisions.
The key is not just selecting “good” answers, but in asking better questions.
In your mid-30’s, you may reflect on life and retrospectively describe your path as straight lines connected by certain monumental decisions (which university, which spouse, where you moved, which job you accepted, a promotion or career change, etc.) These are your “pivot points”. The space between them? That’s where your story gets written. These are the eras of work, reflection, and preparation that frame our stories, between pivot points.
Reality: life’s pivotal moments are birthed from the small decisions you make in the seasons between pivot points.
Compounding Interest of Decisions
Not only is life threaded by a succession of multiple choices, they compound. The decisions you have made in the past profoundly affect the available options you have today. Logically then, how you ask, answer and act on your questions today determines which questions and available answers will be presented to you in the future. Consistently making good small decisions inevitably creates eligibility for more interesting and more opportunistic pivot points later. Conversely, consistently choosing poorly in the small details of your life will steer you away from good future options.
Ultimately, I think you’ll find that success in life (however you define it), to a large extent, is realized by creating good future options from which to choose. Better choices today. Better options tomorrow. This is why the small decisions in life really do matter. They add up, like dropping single grains of sand into a bucket. Over time, they carry weight.
Character Is the Byproduct
The sum of your decisions doesn’t just shape your opportunities; it shapes you and personifies your character.
Character may be tested in major events, but it is built during the mundane details of everyday life.
Strive to instill upstanding ethics into the small choices you make, especially when no one is watching, or when it does not seem to matter, or when it costs you – especially when it costs you. By training your ethical muscles in the small decisions, you will more naturally gravitate to ethical decisions on game day when the stakes are larger, and decisions must be made more quickly.
You will inevitably encounter situations where compromising your ethics seems like it would accelerate a desired outcome. And it might. But that compromise doesn’t just change the outcome, it changes you. Who you believe you are shapes your actions, and your actions, in turn, shape who you believe you are. By taking an action that compromises your ethics, you will come to believe, at least in part, that you are the type of person who is willing to compromise your ethics. This self-perception will, in turn, influence future behavior. This is a slippery slope, and one to avoid from the start. Otherwise, you might find you have accelerated a near-term desire at the expense of a greater life.
The goal then is to continually make consistently good choices, every minute, every hour, every day such that you increase your eligibility for those large, rewarding pivotal moments in life that propel you to greater trajectories.
Choose Your Tribe Wisely
And it’s not only you. Your life is inextricably intertwined with others: spouse, family, friends, peers, associates, acquaintances, co-workers, employers, even complete strangers. Their decisions profoundly affect you as well. It is therefore extremely important to choose your tribe wisely.
Discipline Creates Trajectory
Although we are often unable to foresee future pivot points, we normally understand the correct decision to make in the moment. What we lack is not knowledge, it’s discipline to consistently choose correctly in these small decisions.
Discipline is the mechanism by which good intentions are transformed into enduring habits.
And habits, over time, form character. Character, informed by our habits, is, almost by definition, the person we become. This consistent life-discipline propels us toward favorable future pivot points.
Exposure Magnifies Potential
While you won’t likely know in advance what major decisions await you, you can improve your chances by broadening your experiences now.
Because you will excel most when you are passionate about what you are doing, be sure to stimulate your life with new ideas and experiences such that you find your life-passions early. Expose yourself to new ideas, new places, new people. Travel. Read. Learn languages. Experience different cultures. Increase your radius of exploration beyond the familiar. Turn off the TV/computer/phone/tablet. Go. Read. Learn. Do… such that you may conjure up all your pre-wired greatness while you are still young.
You might have no idea of the innate genetic reaction programs within you until you encounter a certain stimulating situation that activates you.
This habit of good small decisions to build character combined with greater exposure to new life experiences will bend your life-trajectory toward favorable future pivot points, and your peers will call you “lucky”.
Now go get ’em,
– Andy
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For free unsolicited advice I’d say it far exceeds its dollar value! 🙂 Excellent!
My personal favs – charter, tribe, and this: “Expose yourself to new ideas, new places, new people. Travel. Read. Learn languages. Experience different cultures. Increase your radius of exploration beyond the familiar. Turn off the TV/computer/phone/tablet. Go. Read. Learn. Do…“
Will be sharing w several grads in my life this year. 🙂
Love this — it feels like at least three or four chapters in a book. And with different immediate applications (and tests!) for a high school vs. college graduate.
I think most young people find it hard to imagine what their character defining, and ethically challenging!, decisions will be in their next phase of life. Especially the subtle, “boil the frog type” they may unknowingly confront. Might be a good expansion vector for the book chapter. 🙂
Thank Dave. I appreciate the positive feedback.
Being pretty near the age you’re directing this ‘unsolicited advice’ at, I agree with all you had to say. Your topics are, generally speaking, fundamentals that I tend to try to structure my life and decision making around, specifically ethical/moral strength. I do think that it is also important to note that although you should not compromise your ethics when faced with difficult situations, you should always be willing to expand your ethical worldview, and adapt to situations that may not yet be covered by your current ethical/moral compass.
As my mom also mentioned in her comment, I specifically liked the below section, as it is personally relevant to my current life events:
“Expose yourself to new ideas, new places, new people. Travel. Read. Learn languages. Experience different cultures. Increase your radius of exploration beyond the familiar. Turn off the TV/computer/phone/tablet. Go. Read. Learn. Do… such that you may conjure up all your pre-wired greatness while you are still young.”