Join me each week as we explore awareness, human behavior, and the small daily choices that shape our lives. As a thank-you for joining, you'll receive my free guide, 13 Hidden Patterns that Quietly Control Your Life, to help you begin recognizing the hidden patterns that quietly influence your thoughts, habits, and daily decisions.
Who Made Your Last Decision?
Who Made Your Last Decision?We like to believe we make our choices freely. But what if the choice began before we ever noticed it? Have you ever sent a text message and almost immediately wished you could reach through your phone and pull it back? I have. Someone says something that irritates you. A message arrives that you don’t like. Maybe someone questions you. Maybe they criticize you. Maybe they simply use three words in exactly the wrong order at exactly the wrong time. Your mind starts talking. A memory joins the conversation. Pride may have something to say. Fear might offer its opinion. Send. Why did I say that? Here’s the interesting part. You made the decision. Nobody forced you to type the words. Nobody physically pushed the Send button for you. But lately, while working on the next book in the Beyond series, Beyond Influence, I’ve been thinking about something that happens before the decision. Something I think we often overlook. And that has led me to a question that sounds simple until you really start thinking about it:
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Think about what can enter the room before a decision gets made.
Fear.
Desire.
Emotion.
Thoughts.
Comfort.
Past experiences.
Authority.
Other people’s opinions.
Advertising.
Algorithms.
Habits.
Expectations.
Memories.
Even the story you’ve been telling yourself about who you are.
Sometimes several of them arrive at once.
Imagine you’re offered an opportunity to do something you’ve never done before.
Before you’ve even answered, your past may remind you of a previous failure.
Fear says:
What if it happens again?
Comfort says:
Things aren’t that bad the way they are.
Desire says:
But imagine what could happen if this works.
Someone you respect tells you:
I think you should do it.
Someone else says:
That sounds risky.
Your mind starts producing possibilities.
Your emotions begin responding to those possibilities.
Then eventually… you choose.
We usually notice that final part.
Yes or no.
But an entire conversation may have happened before we got there.
That’s what fascinates me.
Because maybe understanding our choices requires us to become aware of the conversation happening before them.
Influence Isn’t the Enemy
This is where I want to make an important distinction.
The goal isn’t to eliminate influence.
I don’t think we could even if we wanted to.
And I’m not sure we’d want to.
Some of the greatest decisions of our lives may happen because of influence.
Someone encourages us.
A parent teaches us.
A child inspires us.
A mentor challenges us.
A book introduces an idea we’ve never considered.
Experience teaches us what didn’t work last time.
Love asks us to think about someone besides ourselves.
Even fear can be useful.
If I’m walking through the woods and hear something large moving through the brush behind me, fear is welcome to join the conversation.
I’d actually appreciate its input.
Influence itself isn’t necessarily good or bad.
The question is:
How much authority are we giving it?
That’s where I’ve started seeing things differently.
Maybe the problem isn’t that fear spoke.
Maybe the problem is that fear spoke…
and we automatically obeyed.
Maybe the problem isn’t that the crowd had an opinion.
It’s that we assumed the crowd must be right.
Maybe the problem isn’t that comfort suggested staying where we are.
It’s that we never asked what staying would cost us.
Maybe the problem isn’t that an algorithm showed us something designed to capture our attention.
It’s that we gave it twenty minutes before realizing we had stopped choosing where our attention went.
Influence will always speak.
But speaking and deciding are not the same thing.
At least…
they don’t have to be.
This Is Where the Pause Becomes Powerful
We’ve been practicing The Power of the Pause during the August Awareness Challenge.
At first, the pause can sound almost too simple.
Wait before responding.
Take a breath.
Don’t immediately react.
Sleep on an important decision.
Give yourself a moment.
But I’m beginning to think there’s something much bigger happening inside that little space.
Because the pause gives us time to notice who else is in the room.
Not literally, of course.
I’m talking about the influences.
Something happens.
Fear speaks.
An emotion rises.
A thought appears.
A memory surfaces.
Comfort makes its case.
And normally we might move directly from influence to action.
Influence → Choice
But awareness can create something between them.
Influence → Pause → Choice
That tiny space may change everything.
Because now we have an opportunity to ask:
What is influencing me right now?
And then an even more important question:
Do I want to give it authority?
Maybe This Is Where Free Will Lives
People have debated free will for thousands of years.
I’m not going to pretend I’ve solved that debate in a newsletter post.
But while writing Beyond Influence, I’ve started looking at free will differently.
Maybe free will doesn’t mean making choices without influence.
How could we?
Everything we’ve experienced has influenced us somehow.
Our childhood.
Our culture.
Our successes.
Our failures.
Our relationships.
Our fears.
Our desires.
The people around us.
The information we consume.
The things we repeatedly do.
Perhaps being free doesn’t require becoming free from influence.
Maybe exercising free will means becoming aware enough to choose which influences receive authority.
That is a very different idea.
Fear can speak without becoming the boss.
Emotion can be heard without taking the wheel.
A thought can appear without becoming truth.
The crowd can vote without deciding the election.
Authority can offer advice without receiving unquestioned obedience.
Your past can provide information without writing your future.
Desire can make a promise without requiring you to sign the contract.
Comfort can invite you to stay without locking the door.
They all get a voice.
But maybe…
you get the final vote.
Beyond Sin Asked a Different Question
This connects directly to something we’ve already explored together.
In Beyond Sin, one of the questions I began asking was:
What will this choice create?
Instead of simply labeling a decision good or bad, I wanted to examine its consequences.
Where does this choice lead?
What does repeating it build?
What happens if I keep going in this direction?
That question helped me look at my choices differently.
But Beyond Influence has pushed me one step backward.
Before asking: What will this choice create?
Perhaps we should first ask: What is influencing me to make it?
Because consequences begin with choices.
And choices often begin with influences.
The Always There Poppa Story Was an Example
A few weeks ago, I shared the story behind Always There Poppa.
At first, I thought I was experiencing envy.
I looked at people who seemed to have more freedom than I did and thought I wanted what they had.
But when I examined the feeling instead of simply judging myself for experiencing it, something else appeared underneath.
Desire.
Or, using the older language we explored in Beyond Sin, lust—not merely sexual lust, but an intense wanting for something we believe will satisfy us.
But even that wasn’t the end of it.
When I kept looking, I realized I didn’t really want their life.
I wanted something their life represented to me.
Freedom.
More control over my time.
The ability to be there for the people I love.
Especially two little girls who helped give that desire a name:
Always There Poppa.
The envy wasn’t the enemy.
The desire wasn’t the enemy.
They were information.
Once I understood what they were pointing toward, I could stop wishing for someone else’s life and start asking what choices might help me build more of what I actually wanted in mine.
That story wasn’t just a story.
It was an example of how this works.
Three Questions
I’m beginning to see three questions connecting much of what we’ve been exploring together.
The first comes from Beyond Influence:
What is influencing me?
The second belongs in the pause:
Do I want to give it authority?
And the third comes from Beyond Sin:
What will this choice create?
Think about how different an ordinary decision might look if we slowed down long enough to ask all three.
You don’t need to do this before choosing what socks to wear.
I’m not trying to turn breakfast into a philosophical crisis.
But the decisions that matter?
The angry response.
The purchase you can’t really afford.
The opportunity you’re considering avoiding.
The conversation you’ve been putting off.
The habit you keep repeating.
The boundary you’re afraid to establish.
The dream you keep telling yourself you’ll pursue someday.
Those might be worth a pause.
Try It Once
So here’s my invitation for the next 24 hours.
Don’t try to analyze every decision you make.
Just catch one.
One moment when you feel yourself about to react, avoid, buy, speak, quit, agree, refuse, procrastinate, or choose.
Pause.
Then ask:
What is influencing me right now?
Don’t judge the answer.
Just notice it.
Fear?
Pride?
Desire?
Comfort?
Habit?
Someone else’s opinion?
An old experience?
An emotion?
Then ask:
Do I want to give this influence authority?
And finally:
What will this choice create?
You may still make exactly the same decision you were going to make.
That’s okay.
The purpose of the exercise isn’t to force yourself to choose differently.
It’s to make sure you’re actually there when the choice is made.
Because influence isn’t going away.
Fear will still speak.
Desire will still make promises.
Emotions will still want their turn at the wheel.
The crowd will still have an opinion.
Your past will still remember.
And comfort will probably continue making a very convincing case for staying exactly where you are.
Maybe freedom isn’t silencing all those voices.
Maybe it’s learning to hear them…
without automatically handing them the keys.
What is influencing me?
Do I want to give it authority?
What will this choice create?
Perhaps somewhere inside those three questions… we begin to find the choice before the choice.
— Magus G.Mack
The power isn’t out there. The choice is in you.
A Message from Magus G.Mack
Join me each week as we explore awareness, human behavior, and the small daily choices that shape our lives. As a thank-you for joining, you'll receive my free guide, 13 Hidden Patterns that Quietly Control Your Life, to help you begin recognizing the hidden patterns that quietly influence your thoughts, habits, and daily decisions.