We are not aware that we are exercising our choice every minute. We take it as a way of life. There are literally thousands of occasions where one can witness two families - or individuals - of comparable circumstances at the end of thirty years of career separated by a vast social distance - one living cosily in a rural town enjoying the local social status and the other in Delhi or Washington riding the waves of social prestige in several fields. It is made possible by the conscious exercise of choice at every minute. The short term gain vs. long term benefit; the occasion to exert vs. the least line of resistance; the courage to embrace the new vs. the cosy comfort of tradition; the readiness to risk vs. the sense of security, etc. etc.
Those who prosper will look at the world from their highest responsibilities. Those who refuse to prosper will always attribute their failure to external circumstances. A man resigned his government job of Rs. 250/- to accept a temporary post of three months on Rs. 750/- in a tea estate. The estate owner's sound advice was of no avail. Now with an MA he was eking out his living running a grinder shop. That is the lure of temporary again called myopic vision. Man is not aware that at every moment he is making a choice. Buried in infinite opportunities of excellent success to raise one's school to be the very best in the world, one makes prudent choices of doing better than other schools. This is so because one expresses her active violent nerves, instead of using her highly educated mind. No example is of any service here.
Before your very eyes, you see people rising in a few years from 350/- income to Rs. 35,000/- income because of good nature. The capacity to complain against everyone and everything and blaming the horoscope keeps the other where he was forty years ago. Choose the RIGHT, the GOOD, the PLEASANT, the VALUABLE and that is the ladder for progress. If you complain, whine, bark, are lazy, compete or ascribe your failure to others, you constantly slide down. "It is my rasi," is a common comment we hear. I would say it is your temperament, your choice. Evil, meanness, deceit, violence, cruelty, tyranny, falsehood, MONEY VALUE, mercenary attitude, short temper, greed, demand, desire, craving, suspicious nature, doubt, sloth, etc. have never paid social dividends.