Quiet Frontier

The Life You Didn't Plan: Chance, Choice, and the Power of Values

Video (10:11): How much of your life is the result of deliberate choices, and how much comes down to chance? We can’t always choose our circumstances. We can’t guarantee that our decisions will produce the outcomes we want. But even when life takes an unexpected turn, we can still decide who we want to be and what principles will guide us.

Chapters

Transcript

00:00:00 so i’d love to be able to sit here and tell you that the life that i’m currently living has been

00:00:10 the result of some unwavering plan that i executed with precision over the years but that’s not the

00:00:19 reality the reality is that so much happens in our lives that’s a combination of chance and

00:00:26 circumstance 20 years ago i met my best friend because i broke my finger setting up a keyboard

00:00:36 stand and she had spent the last eight hours being rejected for employment by every employer in the

00:00:45 city so it kind of makes you wonder how much of your life is actually your choice and how much of

00:00:53 it is just the result of a series of weird accidents that you happen to be present for

00:00:58 today we’re going to be talking about the intersection of luck agency and why being honest isn’t just a

00:01:07 good policy but it can also be kind of a good flirting strategy back when i was trying to

00:01:14 make a living being a professional musician the problem one of the problems i had my first instinct

00:01:21 was apparently industrial sabotage against my own body i’d stepped in as a fill-in keyboard player for

00:01:29 a friend a very close friend of mine and while while we were setting up i managed to slam the keyboard

00:01:37 stand shut on my fingers and i broke one of them now any rational person would have said okay that’s it

00:01:45 i’m calling it a night but i played anyway and it wasn’t out of some heroic drive that i did it it was

00:01:54 because that promise that i made was way more important to me than the pain that i was experiencing in my

00:02:02 finger and that’s where my best friend cindy came into the picture she was in the audience but she wasn’t

00:02:11 there as a fan of my broken finger avant-garde style of playing she was there because she’d spent the

00:02:18 entire day job hunting and had zero success and she just wanted to get some food before she gave up on

00:02:26 adulting for the for the for the rest of that day

00:02:29 we we started talking during a break and now most people would try to lead with their best self the

00:02:38 high resolution version of their lives i took an entirely different approach i looked at her and i

00:02:45 said hey i’m a musician and i work in social services so if it’s money you’re looking for you’re

00:02:52 probably looking in the wrong place and she laughed it turns out that when you have a when you’ve had a

00:03:00 day as bad as she had had blunt honesty is a lot more attractive than a fake smile and a vague

00:03:08 promise of some kind of prosperity luck put us in the same room transparency kept her there

00:03:15 most people only see your highlight reel but cindy has been there with me through the highs and the

00:03:24 lows and she’s watched the slow motion collapse that has taken place due to some professional

00:03:32 burnout i’ve experienced she’s been there through it all over the years she didn’t just see me succeed

00:03:40 although she saw some of that she actually witnessed over the past year or so the deterioration

00:03:48 that’s occurred uh during my most recent job she saw the stress she saw the fatigue she saw the

00:03:56 uncertainty and there’s been a lot of uncertainty and there’s been a lot of soul searching i’m in a

00:04:04 place right now of not knowing not knowing the right path forward not knowing what the future is going

00:04:10 to bring and it’s a leap of faith but it’s it’s not a leap into some kind of fantasy land

00:04:17 in a way it’s reclaiming someone who i used to be and who i kind of lost along the way

00:04:26 so anyway back to cindy and me when you build a relationship on values rather than on prosperity

00:04:34 or wealth or money or anything like that the foundation doesn’t crack what the bank account does

00:04:41 our bond was not forged in good times those are easy it was forged by knowing each other’s worst

00:04:51 versions and deciding that those versions were still worth sticking around for if there’s one

00:04:59 thing cindy and i have mastered through the past couple of decades it’s the art of having absolutely

00:05:07 no idea of what’s going to happen next this isn’t our first wave of uncertainty we’ve lived through

00:05:13 several but there’s a real nuance to it her support doesn’t look like some kind of cheerleader

00:05:21 shouting everything’s going to be great instead it looks like honest fear and genuine concern

00:05:28 she doesn’t need a guarantee of success guarantees are for people who truly don’t understand how the

00:05:35 world actually works what she needs is seriousness she needs to know that i’m aware of the risks ahead

00:05:43 and that i have a clear why as to why i’m taking those risks once you establish that your commitment

00:05:52 to a goal outweighs the fear of the risk guarantees become unnecessary the commitment really is enough

00:06:02 we love to tell ourselves that we’re the captains of our souls and that we’re driving the ship

00:06:08 but in reality we’re quite often just passengers on a bus driven by some guy who’s probably lost too

00:06:16 let’s take another look at that night again when cindy and i met chance set the stage the broken

00:06:23 finger cindy’s bad job hunt the last minute call for a keyboard player that was all just random noise

00:06:31 but agency is what happened next i chose to play through the pain

00:06:38 she chose to stay and talk to me during the break

00:06:43 and that brings us to the default effect

00:06:46 most of our lives are shipped with pre-checked boxes

00:06:50 we follow the default settings we get this degree we take this job

00:06:55 we react to stress by scrolling through social media for three hours

00:07:00 stepping off those defaults requires a conscious commitment to decisions driven by values

00:07:09 not emotional reflexes

00:07:11 look at our states of mind that night cindy was tired and she was dejected

00:07:17 and the default emotion for that is hopelessness

00:07:21 but her agency chose an action of hope

00:07:25 i was in some physical pain

00:07:28 and the default response for me was stop playing

00:07:32 but my agency was driven by a value of commitment

00:07:37 and responsibility to a very very close friend of mine who’s also a musician

00:07:43 uncertainty has no road map

00:07:46 you can’t use external indicators

00:07:50 because the landscape is constantly shifting underneath your feet

00:07:55 the only way to navigate is by an internal compass

00:07:59 namely your values

00:08:02 when you stop asking

00:08:04 why is this happening to me

00:08:06 and start asking

00:08:08 who am i choosing to be

00:08:10 while this happens

00:08:12 you stop being a victim of chance and circumstance

00:08:16 and moving toward being an agent in your own life

00:08:20 we don’t get clean origin stories

00:08:23 there’s no cinematic montage that explains

00:08:26 who we are

00:08:28 why we are

00:08:29 where we are

00:08:30 we just get odd nights and broken fingers

00:08:34 and they become entire lives

00:08:36 provided we keep making those choices based on our personal values

00:08:41 so do i have all the answers

00:08:44 absolutely not

00:08:45 am i operating on some kind of perfectly optimized plan

00:08:51 definitely no

00:08:52 but 20 years ago

00:08:55 i told a total stranger that i was a broke musician

00:09:00 and she decided that sounded like a fair deal

00:09:03 i’m okay with not knowing everything

00:09:06 as long as i can keep living by the values

00:09:10 that have gotten me this far

00:09:13 thanks very much for taking the time to watch

00:09:16 take good care

00:09:19 the sun sets on your evil and you’re good

00:09:25 you try to do what’s right

00:09:31 try to do what you should

00:09:35 be careful love the dangers

00:09:43 when you give your soul to strangers

00:09:47 i’m going home

00:09:49 to cindy’s arms tonight