Difficult Choices

I never could. Not out of courage, but out of inability.

For those who know life can be hard, difficult, but despite everything are still here. Under a wonderful sky made of possibilities waiting to be seized.

If you strip away everything — the habits you didn't choose, the beliefs you accepted wholesale, the tension of being who you think you should be — and focus your energy on what you truly want, you become energy. And where to channel it is yours alone to decide.

You can slow down, sure. But don't stop. Momentum isn't lost from one hit. It's lost when you choose not to get back up.

Every morning I started doing something simple. I get up, and before doing anything else, I ask myself: who do I choose to be today?

Do you know what compound interest is? It works like this: every difficult choice you make today doesn't pay you back just once — it multiplies. Today's pain becomes tomorrow's competence, which becomes the day after's advantage, which becomes an unbridgeable distance between you and those who chose the easy path. Those who postpone pay interest. Those who act collect it.

I didn't tell you that every time you have to make an important decision, your brain will always point you toward the wrong path. The one that seems easier. The one that postpones the problem until tomorrow. The familiar one, that welcomes you, that cradles you and tells you "come on, come here, after all you've already been comfortable on the couch, you know it feels good. You want to go down a road you don't know? Are you crazy, it's dangerous!"

And every time you choose that path, you'll wake up six months later in the same place as before. With the same hunger. With the same distance from what you want to become.

Last week I told you about the price no one wants to pay. About difficult roads, compound interest, anguish as an investment.

And when you start listening to yourself, you discover things you don't like. You discover that most of your thoughts are fears disguised as reasoning. That your emotions are automatic responses, not choices. That your unhappiness doesn't depend on what happens to you, but on how you interpret it.

And like every habit, it's built one day at a time. One thought at a time. One choice at a time.

Not because they were wise. Because they had chosen themselves. They had decided on a direction, even if small, and followed it, deaf to the rest.

The second: "am I making this decision for that version of me, or for someone else who isn't even in this room?"

And that's how that information goes from being information to paths to follow. From knowledge to practical actions that guide you toward your future version. And that's how suffering transforms into a map that gives you a great advantage on the path.

Because it's one thing to make wrong choices at 15, another at 20, and a completely different story at 25.

There are decisions and mistakes that can weigh on you for years.

Whatever happens, you can choose how to read it. You can choose what to focus on about that event, and how to react.

Generic because I hadn't decided anything non-negotiable.

┌────────────────────────────────────────┬───────────────────────────────┐ │ Without perimeter │ With perimeter │ ├────────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤ │ Everything is negotiable │ Some things are not │ ├────────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤ │ Open to everyone │ Close to few │ ├────────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤ │ Reactive │ Chosen │ ├────────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤ │ Always available │ Available when I've decided │ ├────────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤ │ I confuse curiosity with laziness │ Curious within an identity │ ├────────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤ �� I feel everywhere │ I know where I am │ ├────────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤ │ I grow noise │ I grow weight │ └────────────────────────────────────────┴───────────────────────────────┘

All the people I see not achieving, myself included, for years, did the opposite. They dispersed in the name of openness. They confused themselves in the name of freedom. They refused to choose in the name of not missing anything.

There was no decision to make. There was no email to answer. There wasn't even a ready metaphor to write about in this letter.

So it's natural that they're still, it's a choice they never had to make, they don't even know they can make it.

There was no decision to make. There was no email to answer. There wasn't even a ready metaphor to write in this letter.

So it's natural that they're still, it's a choice they've never had to make, they don't even know they can make it.

Because Venus and Serena, when they were born, were born into a direction. Someone had already decided what they were going to be. They didn't have the capacity to understand, want, choose — they were just creatures, that's all, and someone pointed them.

I took a flight from India to Italy, two hours of switching luggage at the airport like doing grocery shopping, then another flight to Brazil. On the plane, when I can't sleep, I don't watch random movies. I choose. And that night I chose King Richard.

He and their mother decided they would have two daughters. That they would train them in tennis. That they would become number one in the world. That there would be two of them. And then they had them.

With anyone who does those jobs that, whether you want it or not, have nothing noble about them — except the pain and sacrifice of what they hide.

I didn't decide it, I didn't reason about it, I didn't look to see if someone else went first. I just glanced right, glanced left, and crossed.

I felt it, you know, that it was bullshit. Inside I thought: maybe I should cross, it's safe, I'm not hurting anyone. But I stayed there, with the decision to cross already made in my head — clear, final — but my feet wouldn't move an inch.

Because every decision of ours hides behind it a series of behaviors and habits that prevent us from changing and being better.