Choices – How much we can really choose?

There is positive thinking movement paradigm: ‘You always have a choice’. It sounds about right on first listening. But I do believe there are layers there to be explored.

Take a look at crisis 2008 autumn till today. Jobs are downsized in companies. New openings are scarce. Finding a job became true art. And it used to be just a skill. How many choices about finding job we really do have? Plenty, I would say. But most of them will increase chances of success only slightly or not at all in current situation.

E.g. you send much more applications. Let’s say 100x than before the crisis. Physically, you are on the upper limit; you simply have no time to send more job applications than that. And at the same time companies in general receive 10x to 10.000 times more applications because army of unemployed has significantly grown. So, that kind of annuls your effort. Or even worse: most of the people out of the job are also sending 100x more applications. So, despite your effort, you end up in much lesser chance of nailing that job than before the crisis.

Did you have choices? Of course you did. You had plenty of them, actually. But sometimes number of choices hardly plays any role at all in your chance of success. Sometimes odds are so bad that even if you use all the good choices available, you end up much worse compared to better times (times with better external factors you cannot change).

And yet, there is army of positive thinkers that are ready to say: JUST DO ALL YOU CAN DO AND IT WILL BRING YOU SUCCESS. Now, in core of positive thinking movement there are some rather good principles, worth living. Don’t get me wrong. But there is number of followers of followers of followers of positive thinking willing to say: ‘YOU ALWAYS HAVE A CHOICE, AND EXERCISING YOUR CHOICES IN RIGHT WAY GUARANTEES YOU SUCCESS!’

I think majority of positive thinking authors are realist enough that they know nothing guarantees you anything. But distorted view of followers of followers of followers is really of the target. Yes, obviously you always have a choice. And yes, by exercising good choices you increase your chance of success. But nothing, nothing among imperfect man can guarantee you success.

So, in summary: you can choose your actions which (if good) will bring you closer to desired result. But you cannot choose, and I repeat this: You cannot choose end results!

l2i