Choices with compounding interest

‘Choices with compounding interest’

‘Nature VS Nurture’

Our environment plays a sizable role in how you internalize your thoughts, externally provide feedback to your surrounding environment, and ultimately how you begin to make choices. In my case I was raised and loved by two parents that migrated from the southeastern part of Virginia. As a kid growing up in the inner city of Hartford, CT there was little thought on the choices and sacrifices my parents made to keep a roof over my sibling’s head.?

While traversing the public school system as well as my surrounding neighborhood you learned very quickly from other peers’ examples of?‘What Not to Do’. I’ll emphasize here on poor illustrations of what I viewed as the nurturing environment that began to shape my thoughts and choices. Like all kids during my childhood, we played hard outside until the streetlights came on. Some of my peers made choices to continue to play despite knowing they should head on home. These choices emboldened them unknowingly to be more daring in other areas in the years to come.

An article written by Laurence Steinberg in 2008,?A Social Neuroscience Perspective on Adolescent Risk-Taking, he discusses how we all at one point and time we all developmentally faced the complexity of decision making and social influence.?First, the maturation of the cognitive control system, as evidenced by structural and functional changes in the prefrontal cortex, strengthens individuals’ abilities to engage in longer-term planning and inhibit impulsive behavior. Second, the maturation of connections across cortical areas and between cortical and subcortical regions facilitates the coordination of cognition and affect, which permits individuals to better modulate socially and emotionally aroused inclinations with deliberative reasoning and, conversely, to modulate excessively deliberative decision-making with social and emotional information.

‘The Sway’

At an early age I realized that my innate ability to grasp others attention was not only natural but deeply rooted within my personality. Unfortunately, the public-school setting would be my biggest detriment as it relates to being able to turn it off so that I could focus on being a student. Ok, imagine your day-to-day where each day you had any of the following scenarios:

·??????Prior to school there is some sort of quarrel over something frivolous that doesn’t get squashed that later in the day erupts into a classroom clearing fight.

·??????Within your classroom there are kids that refuse to follow along with the teachers’ lesson plan, so they sit at the back of the classroom and cause constant interruptions.

·??????Students have formed cliques that have territorial beefs that exist and create both direct and in-direct pressure on those that are not a part of those respective cliques.

·??????In the lunchroom there is periodically the classic food fight or embarrassing confrontation with class clowns that point out your clothing, shoes, etc. of their peers that may not be socially accepted.

While it took many years of education to mature and understand how impactful my own shenanigans would be a detriment on my educational future. During my junior year of high school, I began to apply myself and to my surprise school was no longer an arena where I went to be funny, cool, or socially accepted.?

‘From average to extraordinary choices’

The one thing that all people have in America is the freedom of choice. Your choices as a child growing up will be interdependent on your family’s structure or lack thereof. On the other hand, your family’s religious beliefs can play a developmental role in how you make choices. There are going to be choices to be made from pre-adolescence, to adolescence, to young adulthood, and adulthood. Regardless of your upbringing, the socio-economic class your family fits in, or the political stance your family has. You as an individual are responsible for your own choices. Here are some simple yet very relatable examples of how we as humans can potentially make average choices or extraordinary choices:

Simple examples of average VS extraordinary choices

Average Choice?????????????????????????????

You make a conscious choice??to eat a meal consisting of processed foods with no vegetables and canned soda twice a day.

Extraordinary Choice

You make a consistent effort to eat a meal consisting of brightly colored foods a lean protein, and filtered water twice a day.

Average Choice

You make a conscious decision to spend any free time you have on social media platforms such as Instagram, Tik Tok, and Snapchat.

Extraordinary Choice

You choose to have a fixed amount of time to browse one specific social media platform (Instagram, Tik Tok, and Snapchat) for a fixed amount of time once per day using a timer.

Average Choice

At work you choose to do the minimum well as a part of your description and avoid providing company input at meetings.?

Extraordinary Choice

At work meetings you choose to take notes, asking questions at the appropriate moments. Aside from performing job related duties at a high level. You’re willing and open to do what is necessary to aid your co-workers and the company when opportunities present.?

Average Choice

As a student-athlete during your season you choose to attend team meetings with five minutes to spare without a notebook nor a writing utensil. You seldomly choose to gain feedback from coaches about how to improve your play within your perspective sport.

Extraordinary Choice

As a student-athlete during your season you choose to be 15-minutes early to meetings. Additionally, you ensure your roommate and other players that play your position are with you when you arrive 15-minutes early. Weekly you choose to make it a point to gain valuable insight about your performance as well as your teammates that play your position.??

Now, in life you’re going to absolutely get curve balls thrown your way. It is inevitable and the sooner you can make a concerted effort towards making choices that are in favor of being extraordinary the sooner the trends in your life will be full of satisfaction and accomplishment. Things generally work out well even if it takes years undo a period of average choices.