I Always Have a Choice
One of my least favorite phrases is: "I didn't have a choice."
In 2010, I participated in a writing project inspired by a book called This I Believe. I recently revisited the essay I wrote titled: I Always Have a Choice. And even though it's been sixteen years, I still believe every word.
The idea first clicked for me during my freshman year of college in Economics 101. We were learning about opportunity cost, and the professor explained that aside from being physically restrained, whatever you are doing at any given moment is exactly what you want to be doing. One student raised their hand and bravely suggested, "That's not true. I'd much rather be skiing than sitting in this classroom.” To which the professor replied: “You may want to be skiing, but clearly the consequences of you missing this class, didn’t outweigh the benefits of you going skiing today.”
That moment changed the way I thought about responsibility. Instead of saying, "I don't have time," I started saying, "I didn't make time.” Instead of blaming circumstances, I started asking, "What choice am I making?” It didn't make difficult decisions any easier. It just reminded me that I still had ownership.
Gravity is a law, but feeling stuck is a choice.
Now I know that there are things that happen to us. We lose jobs. We lose people we love. Plans fall apart. Unexpected challenges show up. There are absolutely situations we find ourselves in that we don't choose. But we always have a choice in how we respond.
That's where our power lies. As leaders, this mindset matters because people are watching how we respond when things don't go according to plan. Do we complain? Do we blame? Or do we take ownership of what's next?
Too often we get stuck because we convince ourselves that our choices are limited. We see Option A and Option B, neither of which we like, and assume those are the only possibilities. The best leaders I know, go beyond the obvious options in front of them and they look for new ones.
What if we created another option? What if we had the difficult conversation? Asked for help? Learned a new skill? Changed direction? Created an opportunity that didn’t previously exist.
The moment we stop believing we have a choice, we stop looking for possibilities. Looking back, some of the biggest decisions in my life started with a realization: I wasn't as stuck as I had convinced myself I was. The alternatives weren't attractive. Sometimes they were downright difficult. But when I recognized that I still had agency, I had the ability to move forward. It's the same mindset that gave us the courage to continue building our new venue during the uncertainty of the pandemic. We couldn't control what was happening around us, but we could choose how we responded.
As leaders, we don't always get to choose the circumstances we face. But we do get to choose our response. That belief has shaped many of the most important decisions I've made, and it's one I'll continue coming back to whenever I find myself saying, "I don't have a choice."
