“Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it”
As much as I truly admire this quote and understand its core, it treats “life” as a reactive experience that happens to you by “Chance” and fails to realize that it could be a proactive experience with independent “Choice”.
I realize more as I grow that once you get over this bias, once you realize that life accepts inputs that were not given as options, and once you understand that your life decisions do NOT have to be reactive to events that happen to you or around you, then life will never be the same experience.
How you react to things is very important, but I for one believe that decisions which are not reactive are the most vital.
You get to shape, form, and influence your own life. And this could be in bold decisions as simple as deciding to wake up an hour earlier every day to read, or as seemingly transformative as migrating to a new country. They are both equally effective decisions that could steer your life in a different direction.
You would live this as a maker/writer/artist or entrepreneur because nobody will get you out of bed every morning. Nobody will tell you what you should think, strategize, or execute. You’re acting, not reacting. That’s at the core of innovation.
Life is 100% what you do.
Most of it should be independent choice, some of it is reacting to chance.
One Comment on ““Chance vs. Choice””
I think this reminds me of accountability—that I am responsible for everything in my life. It compels me to acknowledge that I cannot blame others for my lack of success; it’s all on me due to the choices I’ve made.
This realization unlocks in me the fear that I can’t change my environment or the people around me, but maybe I can change them!
Or by moving from that environment to another one that can challenge me, foster my thoughts, and ambitions.
Or, I could choose internally not to be affected by the environment and spend more time with like-minded people.
“Decisions which are not reactive are the most vital.” I think this means if we keep reacting to events, this means we will be stuck in a ((reaction loop)). However, if we initiate the actions, then we will have some form of control because we created the event.
It’s interesting to realize that we have more control over our own lives than we might think.