Gabor Szendi:
Where do things go wrong?

What to teach to ourselves and our children if we wish to ensure a long and successful life for both of us? To be aware of the fact that we make a decision in almost every moment, and at that given moment, whatever insignificant that question might seem, it should be the most important decision of our life. Successful life is built up from a myriad of well-considered micro-decisions we make day by day.

 

 

What to teach to ourselves and our children if we wish to ensure a long and successful life for both of us? To be aware of the fact that we make a decision in almost every moment, and at that given moment, whatever insignificant that question might seem, it should be the most important decision of our life. Successful life is built up from a myriad of well-considered micro-decisions we make day by day.

Since my teenage years I have been interested in the question of why some people fail and others succeed in life. As a rebellious teenager my greatest fear was that what adults meant by saying that 'everyone will grow up one day' will come true and we will end up fading into the grey mass. However, even then I understood that being eccentric, rebelling against authority or feeling outstanding is no guarantee of anything, since these features are common characteristics of young people. And I also realised that the grown-ups of my youth must have had similar great dreams as we had, and now, what has become of them? Is that the normal way of things? Bitter people, derailed lives?

I liked going to summer work camps. Not because I wanted to 'build the country', but I liked situations where I was able to show up my strength and perseverance. Making observations at the work camps helped me to understand a lot of things back then, which led to conclusions I still find valid. Tired, bruised muscles, blisters on the palm, boots hurting the feet, sunburnt skin worked as selection factors separating people ready to endure hardships from those who would prefer to laze around. I often wondered what the main difference was between the two types. I could not see any difference in muscle strength or self-respect. They showed though a tiny difference in spirit: Those who were still digging while others were already cooling off in the shade had some sense of duty and considered digging a challenge. I made similar observations in the high school. I always hated cheating on tests because I thought it was a cop-out from taking efforts. Although slackers in my neighbourhood kept saying that they would turn to be 'persistent in serious matters', I thought persistence is something that needs practising. These observations from my youth culminated in the theory of micro-decisions. It might have seemed an insignificant decision to give in to laziness and stop digging saying 'we haven't come here to work our butts off'. It also might have seemed a sign of ingenuity to get away with skilful cheating instead of learning long hours for an exam. No-one took these micro-decisions seriously. Those, who were lazing around during the whole work camp or cheated wherever they managed to did not think that it might have any consequence in the future. In contrast, I asked myself: If I cannot cope with tiny issues like these, what can I expect from myself in more serious situations? Why do you think you will be able to recognize when it is worth holding on? What's more, what strength will you be able to draw from, if you have never gone the extra mile before? While digging, some people are fully occupied with the pain in their palms, but others might strive for overcoming themselves.

Later I started working as a packer in a post office, but after some time my colleagues told me off and warned me to keep myself back, saying 'we are not on a horse race.' I also worked as a window cleaner. My boss instructed me not to 'waste my time tinkering with the windows upstairs since they cannot be seen from below", but I would rather have worked twice as fast to do my task properly. Somehow, I could never stand pretending to work. When I worked as an unskilled electrician, I ended up chiselling holes for the plugs on the ceiling rather than sit still without doing anything. Was I crazy? Was I looking for trouble and extra work for myself? No, I don't think so: I was practising being conscientious and hard working. In life we don't always get the work we deserve. We need to improve ourselves by the work we have.

Since then a couple of decades have passed during which I have been fortunate to follow quite a few human lives from young to elderly ages. During these years I have strengthened my belief in the theory that accumulated bad decisions largely determine our fate. Bad decisions pile up in our lives because our personality determines which solution we choose in a given situation. The reason why I attach such great importance to micro-decisions is that because they are seemingly weightless, we tend to undervalue their role in the formation of our fate. What we call misfortune is nothing but the future consequence of micro-decisions. A micro-decision is like a bad aiming. If the shotgun's barrel is only a tenth of a millimetre off-centre, the bullet that travels quite a distance will miss the target by several metres. It is hard to see the connection between a micro-decision and its outcome since there may be years passing by between them.

To give a simple example let's take a look at what precautions one takes to prevent disease. One or two carefully chosen vitamins a day does not seem to be a big decision. Those who take vitamins won't experience big changes, and similarly, those, who don't fall for "such crap", won't drop dead in the street the next day, either. However, after ten or twenty years of taking these vitamins conscientiously, epidemiologic tests can reveal huge differences between the two groups of people. And whether or not we choose to be conscientious in our everyday practise is a crucial micro-decision.

There was an interesting experiment on the effectiveness of a kind of blood pressure lowering drug. At the end of the trial the drug did not prove to be more effective than the placebo. The researchers had an idea that maybe it was because not everybody took the medicine properly. So they filtered the patients who followed the prescription precisely and took the medicine in the right way. In their case the drug proved better than the placebo. However, it turned out that the result was similar in the control group: Among regular medicine takers the tablets with no active substance led to the same result as the real drugs. This proved that this blood pressure lowering drug had no more effect than the placebo. But what is more important for us here is that the placebo effect was only working among those who took the tablets (with or without active substance) consistently! You can't get even a placebo effect for free. You need to be conscientious to deserve it!

What else could be the explanation for the often confirmed fact that those with higher intelligence tend to live longer? If not that these people look at the world from a wider perspective, which helps them to make much better micro-decisions than others?

But let's not be confined to health. Bad micro-decisions will ruin marriages, turn people unsuccessful, unhappy and dissatisfied with their children. Every human relationship is a chain of micro-decisions. People who are considerate, compassionate, helpful and loving would decide to make sacrifices for the sake of others. It is a kind of micro-decision how we respond to questions like: "Will you close the window"? You might be saying: "You are sitting closer", but you could also say, "Yes, of course", and close the window. Thousands of bad micro-decisions will make our relationships go sour, and at the end we can't really say what exact reasons led us to break up.

Success at work also depends on micro-decisions. In most cases it is just a little additional effort that makes the difference between a "quite good" and "good" achievement, but it is always preceded by a decision to do so. Is it worth having one last check, touch or correction, or shall we settle for second best? Our life consists of minutes, and every minute is a decision about how to go on. With tiny decisions we can build up our world, or destroy what we have. Bad decisions may seem good at the given moment, no wonder we are tempted to make them. It may sound strange, but is not the positive outcome of the given situation that makes a decision retrospectively worthwhile. The real value comes from the reaffirmation of our positive personality traits, such as conscientiousness, kindness, thoughtfulness, environment friendliness, helpfulness. Inner growth may be just as meaningful as outer actions. We have been learning and doing lots of meaningless and useless things in our lives. There might have been one meaning, though: We have learnt to be hardworking, humble, precise, persevering. To tell the truth these are the qualities I see behind great successes.

We all start our life with a blank sheet of paper. The real question comes when we face the real challenge of our lives: Are we able to cope with it? At that point it is too late to turn to be persistent, dutiful, steadfast and conscientious.

There is a book called 'The Longevity Project' by Howard Friedman and Leslie Martin, based on data collected from the same individuals over several decades. The findings of the authors led to the following conclusion: Those, whose conscientiousness level proved to be high during the research - no matter whether they were children or adults at the time of the tests - happened to live longer than the others. As the authors put it: "Those who were thrifty, persistent, detail oriented and responsible lived the longest active life." But why? Because of their good micro-decisions. People demonstrating these qualities tend to make careful decisions in all kinds of situations, have a system in their lives and mind, plan forward, are thoughtful, feel responsible for their actions, are able to work persistently, value things and are grateful for what life brings them.

So the conclusion? The next moment is right here, from now on each of us can start making good micro-decisions, and after a while we will realise that our life has changed for the better. If for no other reason, than because we have become better human beings.