1.3 Choice Making — Choosing, Cherishing & Acting
Life is a Series of Choices
Every moment, you make choices — what to eat, who to spend time with, what to study, how to react to insult, whether to be honest in a small matter. These choices shape your life cumulatively.
Value education trains us to make choices consciously rather than by habit, peer pressure, or impulse. The process has three steps:
This three-step model comes from Sidney B. Simon's "Values Clarification" (1972) and has been adopted widely in value education curricula.
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Step 1: Choosing
Choosing is the act of deciding what is valuable to you. It has three sub-steps itself:
1a. Choosing freely
The choice must be your own, not imposed by others.
- ✗ "I value hard work because my father said so."
- ✓ "I value hard work because I have seen its impact in my own life."
If a value is imposed, the moment authority disappears, the value is abandoned. Only freely chosen values endure.
1b. Choosing from alternatives
A choice is only meaningful when there are other options you could have picked. If there is no alternative, there is no real choice.
- ✗ "I value honesty because I have no other choice."
- ✓ "Faced with options of honesty, white lies, or convenient silence, I choose honesty."
This requires knowing the alternatives — which is why exposure to different perspectives, debate, and reading matters.
1c. Choosing after thoughtful consideration of consequences
Don't choose blindly. Think about:
- Short-term consequences vs long-term
- Consequences for yourself vs for others
- Material consequences vs psychological / social consequences
If you choose a value after considering these, the choice is informed — and you're far more likely to stick with it.
Example: A student considering whether to copy in an exam. - Short-term: higher marks possible - Long-term: caught → fail; not caught → false confidence; haven't learned the subject - For oneself: short-term gain, long-term cost - For others: dilutes the value of the degree for everyone - Considered choice → don't copy
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Step 2: Cherishing
Cherishing is valuing what you have chosen — feeling proud and happy about your choice. It has two sub-steps:
2a. Being happy with the choice
You are at peace with your decision. You don't second-guess constantly.
If you choose honesty and immediately regret it ("I should have taken the shortcut"), you have not really cherished the choice — you are still tempted by alternatives.
2b. Being willing to publicly affirm the choice
You are ready to stand by your choice publicly — not hide it.
- ✗ "I value honesty (but I won't tell anyone)."
- ✓ "I value honesty — and I'm proud to say so."
If you are not willing to be public about a value, you have not fully cherished it. The willingness to be public is a strong test.
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Step 3: Acting
Acting is practicing the value — translating words into deeds. Two sub-steps:
3a. Acting upon the choice
You actually behave according to the value, not just talk about it.
- ✗ "I believe in honesty, but I lie when convenient."
- ✓ "I believe in honesty, and I have refused short-term gains that required lying."
The proof of a value is in behaviour, not words.
3b. Acting repeatedly — making it a pattern of life
A one-time act is not a value; it's a moment. A value is a repeated pattern.
- ✗ "I gave a beggar money once."
- ✓ "Helping the disadvantaged is a regular part of my life."
This is where habit meets value. Repeated action consolidates the value.
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Summary — The 7 Sub-Steps
| Step | Sub-Step | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Choosing | 1. Freely | Your own choice, not imposed |
| 2. From alternatives | Aware of options | |
| 3. After consequences | Thought through | |
| Cherishing | 4. Happy with choice | At peace |
| 5. Publicly affirm | Willing to be open | |
| Acting | 6. Act on choice | Behaviour matches words |
| 7. Repeated pattern | Becomes a habit |
A "value" is anything that survives all 7 tests.
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Applying the Model — Practical Example
Choice scenario: Should I be punctual?
1. Choosing
- Freely: I genuinely value being on time — not just because my parents do.
- From alternatives: I know I could be casual / late / always-rushing. I'm choosing punctuality.
- After consequences: Late arrival annoys others, signals disrespect, costs opportunities. Punctuality builds trust, gives a sense of control over my day.
2. Cherishing
- Happy: I feel good when I arrive on time; no regret about leaving home earlier.
- Public: I tell others I value punctuality. I'm not secretly indifferent.
3. Acting
- Act: I leave home earlier; plan for traffic; set reminders.
- Pattern: This becomes my consistent behaviour — meetings, classes, social events, every day.
After applying all 7 sub-steps to "punctuality", we can say: Yes, punctuality is genuinely one of my values.
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Why Most People Have Few "Real" Values
If you apply the 7-step test to your stated values, you may find that most are not real values — just preferences, habits, or socially-acceptable statements.
| Stated Value | Test | Real? |
|---|---|---|
| "I value honesty." | Do you lie sometimes? Are you willing to suffer for honesty publicly? | Often, no. |
| "I value family." | Do you give them quality time? Or just lip service while focusing on work? | Mixed. |
| "I care about the environment." | Do you act on it (waste, consumption, transport choices)? | Often, no. |
| "I'm ambitious." | Are you willing to make the hard choices ambition requires? | Mixed. |
| "I value friendship." | Are you there in friends' difficult times, or only good times? | Mixed. |
Honestly testing your stated values is uncomfortable but transformative.
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Why Conscious Choice Matters
Most of life happens by default, not by choice:
- You eat what's around → you didn't choose it
- You consume the media that comes to you → you didn't choose it
- You react to insults with anger → you didn't choose it
- You spend time with whoever is convenient → you didn't choose it
A life of pure defaults is a life lived for you, not by you.
Conscious choice — what to think, what to do, who to be — is the difference between drifting through life and directing it.
When you make a conscious choice, you:
- Feel ownership of your life
- Are more consistent (less swayed by mood, peer pressure)
- Have clarity about disagreements (you know what you stand for)
- Don't blame others for your situation
- Can change course deliberately when needed
- Build a coherent identity over time
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A Note on Indian Tradition
The Indian concept of Vivek (discrimination / discernment) captures something similar. Viveka in Vedanta is the faculty of distinguishing the real from the unreal, the eternal from the transient.
In daily terms, vivek means pausing before reacting, examining options, and choosing consciously. It is sometimes contrasted with avidya (ignorance) — acting by impulse, habit, or programming.
Choice-making is the modern English vocabulary for what Indian wisdom called viveka — the practical exercise of wisdom in daily living.
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Common Difficulties in Choice Making
| Difficulty | What Happens | How to Address |
|---|---|---|
| Peer pressure | Choosing what's popular, not what's right | Pause, ask "Would I choose this if no one was watching?" |
| Information overload | Too many alternatives → freeze | Limit options to 2-3 reasonable ones; decide |
| Short-term temptation | Picking immediate pleasure over long-term good | Visualise outcome 1 year, 5 years out |
| Avoidance | Not deciding → defaulting | Decide consciously even to "wait" — but with a deadline |
| Fear of being wrong | Procrastinating | Accept that imperfect decisions are better than no decisions |
| Cultural conditioning | Choosing what family / society approves | Ask: do I agree with this? Why? |
| Lack of self-knowledge | Not knowing what I really want | Self-exploration (next lesson) |
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Key Terms — Lesson 1.3
These are the operating vocabulary of conscious choice. A strong answer on values clarification, decision-making, or character formation will deploy several of these by name.
Choice Making — The conscious act of deciding what to do, what to value, and who to be — rather than drifting on habit, impulse, or peer pressure. Choice making is the practical face of free will; without it, you are lived rather than living.
Choosing — The first stage of the values-clarification process: deciding what is valuable. It has three sub-tests — freely chosen, chosen from genuine alternatives, and chosen after thoughtful weighing of consequences. A "value" that fails any of the three is a borrowed slogan, not a value.
Cherishing — The second stage — feeling proud of the chosen value and being willing to affirm it publicly. Cherishing is the emotional anchor: if you are quietly ashamed of your choice or hide it from peers, you have not yet cherished it.
Acting — The third stage — translating the cherished value into behaviour, repeatedly, until it is a pattern of life. Aristotle's "we are what we repeatedly do" is the same teaching; one virtuous act is an event, but only repetition makes a virtue.
Values Clarification — The structured approach to identifying and owning one's values, developed by Sidney B. Simon, Louis Raths, and Howard Kirschenbaum (1972) in their book Values Clarification. The choosing-cherishing-acting framework comes from this tradition and is now standard in value education curricula worldwide.
Free Choice — A choice made without coercion, not driven by fear, social pressure, or unexamined obligation. Free choice is the test that distinguishes ownership of a value from compliance. Imposed values evaporate the moment authority does.
Consequence Analysis — The discipline of anticipating and weighing the likely outcomes of a choice — short-term and long-term, for self and others, material and psychological. Without consequence analysis, choices are gambles; with it, they are reasoned commitments.
Public Affirmation — Being willing to declare your value openly — not hiding it from peers, not adapting it to the audience. Public affirmation is the strongest test of cherishing; people who say one thing in public and another in private have neither set of values securely.
Vivek (Viveka) — The Vedantic faculty of discrimination — distinguishing the real from the unreal, the lasting from the passing, the right from the convenient. Vivek is the Indian root concept of conscious choice; without vivek, life is governed by avidya (ignorance) and impulse.
Avidya (Ignorance) — Not lack of information, but lack of right understanding — acting on impulse, habit, or programming rather than on examined values. Avidya is the default human state until value education or self-inquiry breaks it.
Cognitive Dissonance — The psychological discomfort felt when behaviour contradicts stated values — for example, declaring "I value honesty" while regularly cheating in exams. Coined by Leon Festinger (1957), cognitive dissonance is what eventually forces people to either change their behaviour or abandon the stated value; it is why hypocrisy is exhausting.
Cognitive Bias — Systematic errors in thinking that skew choice away from rational consequence-weighing. Confirmation bias, availability bias, sunk-cost fallacy, present bias — every choice maker is subject to them, and knowing them by name is part of mature decision-making.
Default Living — The state of not choosing — eating what is around, consuming whatever media arrives, reacting with conditioned anger, spending time with whoever is convenient. Default living is comfortable but produces a life shaped by your environment, not by you.
Conscious Choice — The deliberate, examined alternative to default living — pausing before reacting, weighing options, and selecting on the basis of values. Conscious choice is exhausting at first and effortless with practice, like any cultivated skill.
Habit Loop — Charles Duhigg's framework — cue, routine, reward — through which repeated actions become automatic. Once a virtuous action is grooved into a habit loop, it requires no willpower; this is why "acting repeatedly" in the values-clarification model is so powerful.
Character — The stable pattern of values, choices, and actions that a person displays across situations — what they do when no one is watching. Character is built by repeated conscious choice; it is also what the world eventually trusts (or doesn't).
Peer Pressure — The social force that pushes choice toward what the group approves rather than what is right. Peer pressure operates strongly in college years, in workplace cultures, and on social media; conscious choice is the only antidote.
Sunk Cost — Resources (money, time, effort) already spent and non-recoverable. The "sunk-cost fallacy" is the habit of continuing a bad choice because of past investment — staying in a wrong career, a toxic relationship, or a failing project. Good choice-makers ignore sunk cost and decide on future expected value.
Present Bias — The tendency to overweight immediate pleasure or pain and underweight future consequences. Present bias is why students copy in exams (immediate gain) despite knowing the long-term cost; the antidote is explicit visualisation of the future self.
Akrasia (Weakness of Will) — The ancient Greek term, used by Aristotle in Nicomachean Ethics, for knowing the right thing and yet doing the wrong — out of weakness, distraction, or short-term desire. Akrasia is the daily enemy of every choice maker; recognising it makes it manageable.
Locus of Control — A psychological concept (Julian Rotter, 1954) for whether you believe outcomes are controlled by your choices (internal locus) or by external forces (external locus). People with an internal locus make more conscious choices, take more responsibility, and report higher life satisfaction.
Responsibility — The ownership of one's choices and their consequences — without blaming circumstances, others, or fate. Responsibility is uncomfortable because it removes excuses; it is also liberating because it puts the steering wheel back in your hands.
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Study deep
- The 7-step test is rigorous. Most "values" don't pass it. That's OK — knowing what you don't actually value is as useful as knowing what you do.
- Cherishing without acting is hypocrisy. "I value honesty" while regularly cheating is worse than not claiming honesty as a value. The gap between stated and lived values causes psychological discomfort (cognitive dissonance).
- Repeated action creates the value. "I want to be patient" doesn't make you patient. Acting patient — repeatedly, over years — does. Aristotle: "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence is not an act but a habit."
- The willingness to be public is a strong test. Many people hold private values that contradict their public behaviour. The willingness to publicly affirm a value forces alignment.
- You don't need many values. A person with 5 deeply held, freely chosen, lived values is far more coherent than someone who claims 20 but lives none.
Common exam question: "Explain the process of choice making — choosing, cherishing, acting." — Three steps + 7 sub-steps; one example (punctuality / honesty); close with "value = anything that survives all 7 tests".
Common exam question: "What is conscious choice? Why is it important?" — Define; contrast with default living; list 6-7 benefits of conscious choice; mention Indian concept of Vivek.
Common exam question: "What are the common difficulties in choice making? How can they be addressed?" — Peer pressure, information overload, short-term temptation, avoidance, fear, cultural conditioning, lack of self-knowledge; table with one-line solutions.
Worked Example — Choosing honesty in an exam
Situation: Under pressure in an exam, a student is tempted to copy.
Apply the three steps:
- Choosing freely — the student decides honesty is genuinely their own value, not merely a reaction to the invigilator watching.
- Choosing from alternatives — the real options are to copy, tell a white lie, stay conveniently silent, or be honest; the student knowingly picks honesty.
- Choosing after consequences — copying might raise marks now, but if caught it means failure; if not caught it builds false confidence and the subject is never learned; it also dilutes the value of the degree for everyone. The considered choice: do not copy.
- Cherishing — the student is at peace with the decision, with no "I should have taken the shortcut" regret, and is willing to say openly that they do not cheat.
- Acting — they actually do not copy, and they keep this up in every exam, not just once.
Outcome: Honesty survives all seven sub-steps, so it is a genuine value — not just a slogan.
Self-check
- What are the three steps of choice making? (choosing, cherishing, acting)
- What are the three sub-steps of choosing? (choosing freely; choosing from alternatives; choosing after thoughtful consideration of consequences)
- What are the two sub-steps of cherishing? (being happy with the choice; being willing to publicly affirm it)
- How many sub-steps must something survive to count as a real value? (all seven)
- Whose 1972 framework gives the choosing–cherishing–acting model? (Sidney B. Simon's "Values Clarification")
- Which Indian concept does the lesson equate with conscious choice-making? (Vivek / viveka — discernment)