“Just decide”
Will Smith once famously said during a very funny interview. Napoleon Hill dedicated a whole chapter to the power of decision. What does it mean to just decide? What power lies in deciding your fate? Is it even possible to decide on your own fate?
I once read a theory that said that time is a dimension of space that can be liken to sheets of paper. That future time is already determined. That we merely “paging” through the pages of time to our inevitable destiny. That theory continues to blow my mind every time I think about it. The gamer that I am, I then compare life to a very good game. The way a good game is designed is that it takes you where the game developers want you to go. Think of games like Grand Theft Auto and Unchartered and the likes. You going through this created world with freedoms only limited by the game itself and somehow, you think you have the power to decide the fate of the character under your control. However, that’s the illusion that the game designers want to believe. The better the illusion, the better the game.
Can we then call life a video game in which far greater and more powerful beings control our lives? That is a philosophical question for another day. Yet from that question, we can break down the power that making a decision has in our lives. Tony Robbins likes to say that wherever your focus flows, there your energy flows too. In the same interview, Will Smith paraphrased The Alchemist by saying that whenever you make a decision, the universe will makes means that your decision manifests itself into existence. In one of my favourite sermons at church, Dr. Alan Bagg once said that God’s will is your will. That God will only give you the fruits that you have sown. Therefore whatever that we decide on and act on, that decision creates the life that we live.
This is the catch that has many in limbo. The fact is, many of us do not have control over our decisions. Like the video game, we move our character towards the light thinking that it is the best decision. Failing to see that lights, signs and sounds are key elements to effective video game designs. That light was purposely placed there so that the gamer leads the character there. The same with life but in a far more deeper and complex manner. The easiest place to see this in action is whenever you go to a store to purchase an item. The R9.99 is better to the eye than a whole R10. I once fell prey to this ancient yet effective pricing strategy. I was buying two refill packets of coffee creamer until a white woman cautioned me to look at the price. She pointed her finger to the price of the box of coffee creamer, that had more in terms of grams per packet. I realised the prices were the same. The difference was that the packets were supposedly on sale and the sale board was loud enough for one to notice. In that moment, the store had made the decision for me for I failed to see that I was being robbed blindly. Now think of the other areas of life that we fail to see that we are not in control.
There lies the true power of making a decision. The person who decides to take control, the mind begins to notice factors around their decision. A person who decides to lose weight, that person will begin to notice old friends who transformed their bodies and begin to notice products that aid in weight loss. A person who decides to take control of their finances, their mind will begin to notice tools and techniques to control their finances. They’ll begin to notice the hidden costs in the many day-to-day transactions that we undertake. However, that’s half the story.
The other half lies within the power to implement. The person who decided to lose weight must now act on their goal by fixing their diet and going to the gym. The person who decided to take control of their finances must begin budgeting and tracking each of their daily expenses. This is the true power that comes from making a decision. This decision is an active decision and is not a passive one. A passive one is the one like buying something on sale thinking it is a bargain (when most often or not, it is not). To actively and consistently act on the decisions that we undertake requires great effort. Even though science suggests that we merely paging through the book of time, to write your own story in those pages is what many people fail to do.
To a great degree, we cannot blame them. Since the start of recorded story, history is filled with the powerful and less powerful. The less powerful were always under the lead of the powerful. And even the powerful, like the royalties and great warriors, followed a tradition that enabled them to be powerful. The ones that stood out however, are the ones that went against the grain. In modern history, we have the likes like Einstein who defied established institutes of science with his theory of relativity. We have the likes like the father of the nation, Nelson Mandela who defied the systems that strategically and very intelligently oppressed many people of colour. They decided to act on their own decisions and surely, the universe opened channels that they acted on to manifest their idea and what they decided to be their way of life.
Thoughts are seeds as many great personal development speakers have said over the years. These thoughts are the ones that birth the lives we live. Looking at a field that is unkempt and let wild, many weeds grow. These weeds strangle the would-be flowers that would have blossomed on that land, unless the skilled farmer comes along and works on the land to reveal the beauty within. The same with the human mind. Many of us reap weeds that we do not know where they come from. It is like the young man who wants a million but the last time he read a book was when he was in Matric. This young man has no budget to control his finance yet he is adamant that he will make a million. The power of decision-making suggests that this young is exposed to ways to make a million. Unless he acts on following some of those ways until he finds the one that works for him, he will never make that million.
It makes sense why Jesus made it very clear why a man’s yes should be yes and a man’s no should be a no. He was simply elaborating the power that comes from making a decision. The power to decide and to act on that which we decide is the wand that shapes the destiny of our lives. It is beautiful to know that even though we might being paging through the fabric of the universe, we have the magic pen to write in those pages.