Forget About "Making Better Choices"

Hero,

All characters in all stories, including you, in your life story, will face choices.

It’s impossible to know what a choice actually entails before it’s made, but choices tend to appear easy or hard.

An easy-appearing choice would be: what tie to wear to your 60-hour a week, middle-tier data analyst job at Accenture.

A hard-appearing choice would be—

Wait. You don’t like the idea of working 60 hours a week as a middle-tier data analyst (whatever TF that even means) at Accenture?

Let’s pretend that’s your life now.

You’ve worked this job for years, but today was the first time you looked around the four walls of your tiny office and wondered exactly where you went wrong.

Today was the day you finally asked yourself “how did I get here?”

When you look around at your scene—basically everything your five senses can perceive—whatever your scene looks and feels like, realize it was a string of choices that got you there.

It could be argued that your life amounts to your choices.

The implications of some choices are perhaps obvious:

• move to Thailand

• steal that car

• sign the mortgage papers

Some, less so:

• Get carrots from the farmer’s market

• Go to that lecture on mid-17th century European economics

• Lift weights today

Again, you can never know the magnitude of a choice when you make it.

You could choose to get carrots from the farmer’s market like you do every Tuesday, and find yourself in a conversation with the person with whom you will end up spending the next 20 years of your life.

Sometimes little choices, ones that seemed insignificant at the time, were worth all the marbles.

Even with the benefit of hindsight, it’s very difficult to identify the inflection point (that moment that changed everything) in a string of choices.

When we’re faced with big choices, we tend to weigh the pros, the cons and the stakes. In the world of storytelling, this is called a “dilemma,” or being “on the horns of a dilemma.”

That’s another way of saying there’s no easy answer.

This is entertaining to watch, but stressful to experience, as big choices have consequences, and none of us have a crystal ball.

That’s why trying figure out how to “make the right choice” is like betting on roulette.

Trying to generate better choice points, well, that’s another story altogether.

Or rather, it could make another story altogether.

There are great choice points, such as:

• Follow the Arabian/West Asian portion of the F1 circuit for 3 weeks

• Hike the Atlas Mountains for 2 months

And less great ones:

• Take that middling data analyst job at Accenture

• Sell your Chevy Tahoe

And downright bad ones:

• Go to jail

• Flee the county

The idea is to be faced with better and better choice points. Or rather, the kind of choice points that have a realistic shot of creating the kind of scene you want.

How do you do that?

First, recognize where choice points exist.

Hint: look in places where it seems like you have no choice; where what happens next seems just “automatic.”

For instance:

• Press the snooze bar.

• Get up and meditate.

Second, make the “tougher” choice.

If you’re making a choice that requires courage, is “less automatic” or “goes against your programming,” you’re probably on the right track.

Make a practice of uncovering choice points, making more daring, interesting or less habit-based choices, and more interesting choice points will tend to reveal themselves.

Don’t ask me why, it’s just one of those Storytelling Laws.

Do these things, and you will become “lucky.” By “lucky,” I mean becoming good at recognizing and aligning your choice points with your highest good.

In sum, if you don’t like your scene, or you want to create a different one, think of the scene you want, then make the kinds of choices you think a person who lives in that scene would make.

Better, more “aligned” choice points will start to appear.

There’s obviously more to it than that, and we’ll get there.

For now… I’ll see you on the path.

Warmest, warmest regards,

Patrick Christell

***

I am a professional storyteller. I’ve been doing it for over two decades. I’ve synthesized everything I’ve learned into a self-actualization framework wherein anyone can apply the structure of epic storytelling toward becoming not only a master storyteller, but the master of their own life story. For more StoryChanging manna, browse the rest of my newsletter here, follow me on Twitter or check out my website. If you have any questions, or just want to chat, feel free to reach out on twitter DMs or via the email link on my website.