The truth is you always have a choice.You have a choice or even multiple choices, in every single circumstance. If a man holds you up at gunpoint and gives you the option of losing your gp or your hp(gamer humor), he isn't forcing you to give him your money. You are free to ignore him, his threat and his gun. If you do, you stand a very good chance of getting shot. Perhaps you could struggle with him, get the gun and shoot him instead, chase him off or tell him to give up his money.
Most people, being intimidated by the person wielding the gun, choose to give the thief their money. They do not want to deal with the potential consequences of defying the person with the gun. It is easier to lie to themselves and everyone else and say that they were forced to give up their money.
Back to the examples above. You did forget to take the trash out. But it was only because you didn't want to do it in the first place. It was not important to you. Regarding the audition, you kept the agreement because you didn't want to anger your spouse or disappoint your child. Plus if you hadn't kept it, it would be your fault if your kid didn't make it into that prestigious school. Unlike the first example, there were real consequences here.
You made a conscious choice. You wanted your friends upset at you more than you wanted your immediate family displeased with you. If that were not true, you would have blown them off instead of your friends. Or course, you didn't really "want" your friends mad at you, but you decided one or the other was happening and picked which one it would be.
Just because we are not pleased with the consequences that a choice we could make are likely to cause, it does not mean that we do not have a choice, that that choices is not an option. It is a choice, just one we are not likely to take. Acknowledging this is an enormous part of being a mature responsible adult and removes the possibility of you being a victim.
We, as people, tend to make the choices that will impact us in the least negative way possible.
The responsible person will state that there are no other good options. The difference is the victim will state that there are no other options.
Most people go to work every day that they do because they want to. Though it sounds funny that is the real truth. But, if you ask them if they want to go to work, the majority of them will, in fact, tell you that they do not. They would rather stay home and sleep in, play video games or spend time with their kids. When faced with the opportunity to go to work or do one of those other things, given the choice of just one over the other, very few would choose to go to work.
If that is true, why aren't there more empty chairs at the office every day? Because things are never that simple. Without money coming in we would lose our homes our cars and perhaps even our families. We work because we would rather have the results of working than the results of not working. In other words we work because we want to.
There is a consequence for everything we do or don't do. When deciding whether or not to do something we fit all the variables we are aware of into an equation and decide whether doing or not doing that thing will produce the result we want or will avoid the result we don't want. Then we act accordingly.
What it all boils down to is, every single thing that we do, we do because we want to. Every single thing that we do not do, we do not do because we do not want to. Any other explanation is a lie.
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