Reach Out the Optimal Destiny Consciously

Are you a person who believes you can change your destiny with free-will?

Can we bend the reality with our will power?

Are we making the optimal decisions (neither right nor wrong) without any internal or external compulsions? Or are we in an illusion of having the will power to make choices.

We as modern generation commonly think that our decisions are made independently by the strength of our consciousness. We are strong believers of, our fate is in our hands as opposed to our ancestors who believed in horoscope and life is predetermined. So this leaves us with a question, is it completely true that we control our destiny? or to which extend our consciousness influences our decisions?

Some theories suggest that our pasts heavily shape the direction of our future, and each of our decisions isn’t made completely independent by the strength of our free-will, rather we are being influenced by our past exposure and biases in a sub-conscious level while making any decision.

This is true as we tend to rely on our past experiences and the biases fed into our mind from our childhood while making decisions, judgments and conclusions. But the reality is, future is always filled with possibilities that we never encountered before, to grab those opportunities we need to be more open minded towards the world without letting our pasts influence our future decisions.

For centuries we believed everything is cause and effect, then the argument goes, the effects of the future have already been determined by prior causes.
It’s an unbroken chain, which we don’t control.This is a problem man kind is struggling to tackle over centuries and yet didn’t settle with an answer.
In fact, the degree to which humans control their own destiny has been debated by philosophers for over two millennia. As with most such questions, we’re no closer to answering them today than we were then.

The only thing that does appear relatively certain is that, regardless of whether free will exists or not, we at the very least have some illusion of
agency relating to our choices. Even though we aren’t sure about this agency, this gives us a sense of control and purposeful orientation. This feeling can positively contribute to our experience, which makes things relevant regardless of the answer.

So it is important to enhance this agency which determines everything from how you see the responsibilities in your life to the way you go about meeting your personal goals.

1. Enrich your Awareness.

Our sense of awareness expands as we realize that the world is far larger than what we think of it and experience through our immediate senses.

By enhancing awareness we move from seeing the world as something narrow to a world that’s richer, broader and contains more possibilities.

Generally adults are more aware of situations than children, which doesn’t mean awareness is related to aging. Actually awareness expands over time, but it does at different rates for different people. If you experience more, the chances are your circle of awareness will be broader than others.

How this is related our free will and decision making?
Ultimately, your awareness is what determines your beliefs and establishes the boundaries of what you perceive to be possible. This in turn directly impacts the daily decisions you make about what to do with yourself.

We can’t intellectualize awareness beforehand because they require first-hand exposure through experience. Enriching our awareness shifts our perspective of what is real and what is important and whats is worth doing. One way to expand your horizon of awareness is to involve your self in variety of experimentation. The other way is to follow the prominent personalities by reading their auto-biographies. Auto-biographies often contain the moments of awareness which changed the entire life of that person and how they become successful.

2. Functional Effectiveness

Once we expand our awareness and shape the outer boundary of what is possible in our life’s, then the ability to operate effectively within such a boundary determines the probability of our successful decision making and free-will.

Once you’ve expanded your horizons by hitting the pivots of awareness necessary to start whatever journey it is that you are after, then the pressure increasingly falls on the day to day choices you make to ensure that you can align your decision-making with your intentions.

If the maximum potential available at any point — as defined by your circle of awareness — represents the ultimate success level, then being a maximally
capable agent would mean your functionality is strong enough to hit 100% of that potential.

At any given point, agency is about either choosing an action or intentionally overlooking it. That means that it depends on how well you absorb, filter, and manage information before you apply it to a particular situation. It depends on your ability to interact with complexity.

So it is also important to improve the functional effectiveness in-order to enhance the agent of decision making and free will.

3. Strengthen Against Akrasia

While both awareness and functionality can increase the scope of our potential agency in the world, they don’t necessarily protect us from getting in our own way, which can also limit us.

The term Akrasia is Greek for lacking command of the will.If a person has two options to choose between — A and B — and they know that A is the better choice in this instance, but somehow, they end up going with option B, then they have engaged their Akrasia. Today, we assign this to various types of behaviors.

Aristotle, however, attributed it to one of two: a lapse in reason or a personal weakness. Either the temptation of a passion was too strong, or we were afraid to assert ourselves.

Both of these reduce our agency because rather than doing what we know we ought to do, we instead get trapped into making sub-optimal decisions even though we know better.

Modern day neural science gives an explanations of why this contradiction happens. It suggests that we have different neural modules in the brain that are sometimes in conflict with each other. Some modules want one thing, whereas different ones want another.Neurons doesn’t know whether something is right or wrong neither they do whether decisions we make are optimal.

Neuron modules trigger according to the past feedback they gained, suppose you have given into temptation in the past and made some sub-optimal decisions chances are high to make the same mistake again as those neuron modules have already strengthened due to repeated triggering.

The trick is to find ways to overcome the short-term allure of the modules encouraging sub-optimal decisions. If you label Akrasia when you sense it and are able to slip out of its grip once, then the next time will be easier. The time after that will be even more so.

Anytime you make a decision that aligns with your intentions, you strengthen the relevant module while weakening the opposite one. If you know this, you can intercept when needed.

The more agency you exert, the more you will have in the future to guide your momentum.