Author John Maxwell said that life is a matter of choices, and every choice you make, makes you. It is scientifically believed that the average person makes 35,000 decisions a day. Since that is an average, that means some people make more and some make less. Since most of us sleep 8 hours day that leaves 16 hours to make 35,000 choices or 2187 choices per hour. This is where the study of choices get interesting. A study by the Mirror in the UK noted that the average person will make 773,618 decisions in a lifetime and that 143,262 will be decisions that will be regrettable. That say's that most of us will regret 20% of the decisions we make. Try being young, Black, male, member of single parent family, and in poverty. The youthful choices I had to make were not typical American choices. At some point in my life, I had to choose to accept or deny every choice offering in the animation of the young boy.
According to Beagle Street Life Insurance, the top five decisions of a typical American are : having children, getting married, moving, learning to drive, and retiring. Clearly I'm not typical because the top five for me were: 1) staying alive, 2) staying alive, 3) staying alive, 4) staying alive, and 5) staying alive. My days were full of opportunities to choose some regrettable and ether were many examples around me that I could have easily followed. So what happened? I found a mentor at a young age that gave me a different path to follow. that mentor taught method decisions fall into three buckets: 1) Impulsive - very little thought, 2) Avoidance - no thought and 3) reflective - deep thought. Don't get me wrong, I still made my share of regrettable decisions, but by focusing on deep thinking first my choices helped make me a better person. John Maxwell was right, life is a matter of choices, every choice you make, makes you.