You Cannot Follow Every Path. You’ll Have to Make Choices and Trade-offs

and it is not such a bad thing…

Photo by Anubhav Saxena on Unsplash

One of the most uncomfortable truths I’ve had to accept is that you must learn to make trade-offs in life.

You can’t do everything you want to. You can’t be everything you want to be.

This isn’t very popular but it has to be said.

Mainstream self-inflating motivational speakers try to convince you that you can be all that you want to be and do all that you want to do. But that is not true.

Such fallacies cannot stand objective examination. And it would be best if you didn’t fall for such deceptions.

The Truth

The truth is that you are grossly limited. The reality of your limitedness shouldn’t be avoided but accepted. It shouldn’t be confronted but embraced.

The idea of limitlessness is alien to human design as it is unattainable. The embodied man must always function within a defined set of laws, instructions, and constraints.

The reality of your limitedness shouldn’t be avoided but accepted. It shouldn’t be confronted but embraced.

Our mortality, inescapable ignorance (on specific issues), and the possibility of ‘life happening’ to us — even when we do not will it — are potent reminders that we are limited beings.

Any attempt to circumvent this reality will result in sure heartbreak and depression.

My Experience

An old friend sent me a DM today.

It read, “Just sad that you’ve left the IT world.”

What he meant was that I’m now committed to a different path. From programmer and IT enthusiast to digital writer and writing coach.

Tears filled my eyes as I read that.

I’ve had to trade one path for the other.

Hold on! Before you start thinking I didn’t have to, logically analyze the cost of choosing either path.

Life will require you to make trade-offs. The greater the trade-off you’ve got to make, the greater the potential gains you stand to reap.

You cannot follow every path. You’ll have to make choices and trade-offs. The very fact that you have to choose is, in fact, a potent reminder that you’re limited.

You cannot follow every path. You’ll have to make choices and trade-offs.

But you shouldn’t feel terrible and beat yourself up just because you think you’re “missing out.”

Understand that missing out is inevitable. Instead, focus on establishing metrics that would assist you in making the right choices and trade-offs when the time comes.

Like Paulo Coelho rightly said,

“Freedom is not the absence of commitments, but the ability to choose — and commit [yourself] to — what is best for [you].”