The following is a modified excerpt from my new book
Choose Hard, Live Easy – The Art of War for Decision-Making
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(DEFCON: How Good/Bad Are Your Decisions?)
A decision I made 40 years ago still haunts me today.
I was 16, and little did I know at the time that I was drawing cards from life’s Death Deck.
Life’s Death Deck
In Choose Hard, Live Easy, I call life’s Death Deck a pile of cards that are unfavorably skewed with catastrophic outcomes. Nobody knowingly puts the Death Deck in their hands and draws from it, but it happens every single day when we make poor decisions, often fueled by our pursuit of ease, adrenaline, and stupid dopamine rushes.
Think of it like a regular 52-card deck. Sure, 46 of the cards have neutral or positive outcomes, but 6 of those cards carry the skull-and-crossbones. When you draw one of those cards, your life instantly changes forever. I’m talking about lifelong pain. Debilitation. Unwanted drama. Bankruptcy. And yep, even prison or death.
Case in point…
When I was 16, I got into a motorcycle accident. No, don’t blame my single mom; she was totally against the motorbike. But I begged and pleaded, whining until her ears nearly bled. Finally, she caved, and I bought the dirt bike. My motive? It was my Easy-Button fix for being overweight, invisible, and a social pariah. I wasn’t a jock who could throw a football or leap hurdles. I wasn’t a nerd who could hack a computer or a stoner getting blitzed in the parking lot. I was nothing, just a forgettable face in a crowded cafeteria. But on that bike, which roared with grit and toughness? I imagined becoming someone.
Someone cool. Someone dangerous. Someone who made girls blush and guys jealous.
Hit the gym and work off the flab? Too slow. Master a sport or learn guitar? Too hard. Nah, this was faster. Easier. Sexier horsepower in a bottle, as if I’d bought it from Walmart.
While the good old boys’ club might claim that women and machinery do not mix, that’s far from reality. Motorized vehicles and teenage boys with undeveloped prefrontal cortices? Now there’s the lethal cocktail! Exhibit A: I gunned my motorbike on a craggy, unscouted dirt road at full throttle and crashed epically. I broke bones, damaged nerves in my knee, and permanently injured my neck. Now, anytime I look left or right, it’s painful. You’d think someone was cracking bubble wrap. This simple incident, which rewarded me with all but four minutes of Easy thrills and cheap adrenaline, cost me forty years of Hard.
My simple decision to buy a dirt bike was a perfect demonstration of the Easy/Hard Paradox. It turned out to be one of my biggest defeats in the Shadow War.
You see, I originally wanted to buy an electric guitar, but I passed because I knew learning it to a decent level of “coolness” would be, you guessed it—Hard.
Here’s my simple thought process and how Easy ambushes the moment, turning our decisions into lost battles, or worse, malignant cancers that infect future battles.
- Many Easys: I ate myself overweight, and now I’m undesirable.
- One Easy: I need something to make me popular.
- New Easy: Dirt bike!
The rest was bone-breaking history: I drew the skull and crossbones, and 40 years later, my neck is the one health issue that continues to torment me periodically. (Incidentally, my neck feels the best ever due to my longevity commitment, despite returning to heavy weightlifting.)
How do you put the Death Deck in your hands and draw?
Directional probability.
Anytime your decisions BOOST the probabilities of a bad outcome, congratulations champ, you’ve grabbed the DEATH DECK. A bad outcome, often misattributed to bad luck, is self-induced through poor decision-making that skews odds unfavorably. Nope, it wasn’t bad luck; it was a bad decision.
The question I want to leave you with this is this…
What decisions will you be making this week that are increasing the probabilities of a horrendous outcome? What stupid draws from the Death Deck will you make while hoping not to pull the skull-and-crossbones? Here’s the Death Deck in action:
- Speeding 95 mph on the freeway while weaving through traffic, because you know, your time is more important than the 400 people around you.
- Unprotected sex with some stranger you met at some dumpy tavern.
- Riding on the back of a motorcycle with your cool, edgy friend.
- Fighting some mega-chad at a bar because he winked at your girlfriend.
- Getting married after 3 weeks of dating (MJ, you dummy! It’s my soulmate! [Sure it is, LOL.])
- Going to a Coldplay concert with your workplace girlfriend, even though you’re married. (True story)
- Intoxicated driving because you’re too cheap to Uber. (True story)
- Betting your life savings on some Kalshi prediction.
- Videoing yourself berating a minimum-wage employee because you don’t like her employer’s politics. (True story)
- Betting $50 on the college football team you play for, voiding your $10M contract. (True story)
I can go on and on with stories from my own life. I’m no saint, and I survived many Death Deck draws– but the one I didn’t survive still haunts me today, a whopping 40 years later.
The Law of Asymmetry (Chapter 10)— the magnitude of choice — profoundly defined my Law of Eventuality (Chapter 8)— the future I must endure.
Your decisions matter, and not just on the day you make them.
Choose wisely, or suffer lastingly.
MJ DeMarco, Author/Entrepreneur