The Impact of Choices

It's becoming clearer and clearer to me that I am the summation of the outcomes of my decisions.  While there are some decisions which may be reversed - some paths which can be retraced back to their fork in the road moment, I always take a piece of the former path with me on the new one.  The reason I backed up to change a decision sticks to me even on the new path.  Sometimes I wear that as guilt, mistrust, anger, or shame.  Most paths are one way, however.  As Robert Frost said in The Road Less Traveled, "Oh I kept the first for another day! Yet, knowing how way leads onto way, I doubted if I should ever come back."  

I think we often think of this in regards to the "big" decisions in our lives.  Lately, I've been considering the impact of the little decisions.  The youngest of my MKP brothers, Morgan, was over yesterday and we got to talking about how the older men in the group are envious of him for making the choice to do this training at his age.  If a ship makes a one degree course adjustment to the east, it will be miles east of the place it would have been with no adjustment.  Minor choice + time = major difference in destination.  When we make minor decisions, those choices may place us miles in a different direction when we're older.

Here's an excellent example.  I was scanning books on Amazon a month or so ago and found a book called "10 Smart Things Gay Men Can Do to Find Real Love" by Joe Kort.  The book had a profound impact on me.  So much so that I contacted the author and hired him to be my life coach.  He's the one who recommended that I go to Mankind Project.  Deciding to do that required three things from me:  Trust, Faith, and Courage.  Trust in Joe, Faith in the organization to do what they claimed to be able to do, and Courage to act.  The decision to sign up and work with this group has changed my life forever.  And it all started with a decision to order a book from Amazon.

So never underestimate the impact of your decisions.  The decision to call someone, not to call someone, apologize, not apologize, support someone or not, help someone or not.  Every decision has a ripple effect.  You're either riding the wave or bracing for an impact with a tidal wave, but the chances are very good that you created both of them through one or more decisions you've made.  Your ability to spot that early on will likely empower you to control the outcome of your life much more than you currently think you can.