Choices, options, alternatives, preferences, opportunities, decisions; these are all words that have a powerful impact on our collective psyches as human beings. They evoke free will and self-determination, the ability to become whomever we want to become, and the ability to opt for whatever road we choose in our life’s journey. Yet, whether we actually possess these attributes has been a point of discussion—and contention—since the earliest philosophers began to ponder our existence. In this article I will explore what I believe are the five most powerful forces that shape our life. I will also muddy the waters in terms of how much freedom we do have to choose our life’s path. Those five forces are: genes, upbringing, culture, technology, and unexpected events.

Genes

We Americans don’t like to talk about the influence of genes on who we become. Such acceptance of that effect goes against our deep-seated ethos that we can become anything we choose if only we devote sufficient time and energy to it. So, as many Americans want to believe, anyone can be a Nobel Prize winner, virtuoso pianist, professional athlete, or Grand Master chess player if they commit themselves earlier enough and devote the requisite time required. My position certainly violates the “10 years, 10,000 hours” rule, popularized by Malcolm Gladwell, that anyone can become an expert if they put in those years and hours (FYI, here’s a good read that debunks the claim).

But the impact of genes on who we become has been demonstrated repeated in the scientific community. The general consensus is that genes account for about 50% of our development. Our genes determine many physical attributes including height, body type, eye and hair color, and susceptibility to certain diseases. Personality traits have been found to be derived from our genes including extraversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness, and temperament. Genes also influence the top end of what we are capable (and this where this discussion can get dicey), for example, intelligence, athletic ability, educational attainment, and socioeconomic status. The environment, whether deprived or enriched, then determines how close to that top end of our genetic capabilities we reach. We can either thank or curse our parents for the genes they gave us (though we shouldn’t blame them because they were victims of their parents’ genes, and so on ad infinitum from each previous generation).

Despite the significance of genes on our development, I don’t actually find it helpful to talk about them for several reasons. First, we don’t know how “good” our genes are until we test our limits. For example, we don’t know whether we have exceptional athletic genes until we train for years in a sport and find out how good we become (which, in all likelihood, will be a disappointing lesson). Second, we can’t do anything about the genes we are given (at least not in the foreseeable future), so it would be a fruitless endeavor to dwell on them. Third, so-called good genes only get us to the front of the pack at the start line and say little about where we will finish. The world is full of gifted failures, meaning people who had great genes, but didn’t fully realize their natural abilities. It’s possible to make it very far on seemingly mediocre genes with a lot of determination, hard work, persistence, and patience.

Upbringing

If genes account for half of the influence on our development, then, ipso facto, our environment must account for the other half. Perhaps the most significant part of our environment is our family upbringing. Recent research has reported that 20% to 50% of the differences in child development are due to parent influences.

Some years ago, I wrote a book, Your Children are Listening, of which the central premise is that “our children become the message we get the most.” And parents have the earliest, most immediate, and longest-lasting impact on what those messages will be. Our values and attitudes about ourselves, relationships, education, career, religion, politics, the list goes on, initially come from our upbringing.

Like genes, we don’t choose the upbringing we have or the messages we receive as children. To a large degree, we are victims of whatever messages we receive in childhood—good, bad, or ugly—through parents’ actions, words, or simply through who they are. When we are young, we tend to adopt the dominant messages within our family uncritically for two reasons. First, their early presence, consistency, and persistence. Second, we lack the cognitive maturity to separate healthy from unhealthy messages and choose to accept only the healthy ones. This exposure, early and often, is woven into the fabric of our young lives, gaining traction in our minds, and becoming our default when evaluating our world throughout childhood and, most often, into adulthood. The depth of this internalization can make it difficult for new ways of looking at the world to take hold and replace those originally ingrained in our psyches as children.

Unlike genes, as we mature and our executive functioning develops, we become increasingly capable of making choices about whether we adopt or reject those messages. A part of this process involves our natural development move toward separation from our parents and our desire to become independent of them, not only in our actions, but also in our views. However, rejecting the messages that were instilled in our young minds is no small task. Due to repetition, reinforcement, and habit, and creating a world around those early values, attitudes, and beliefs that supports them, they develop an inertia and a trajectory that are difficult to shift and redirect.

Yet, change is possible through several processes. First, as we separate from our parents and venture out into the world of school, friends, and work, we interact with a diverse range of people with perspectives that differ from our own. Second, in that diaspora, we are exposed to cultures that may be vastly different from our own. Third, through dissatisfaction with the status quo of our lives, self-exploration, and conscious choice, we may make deliberate decisions to jettison the values, attitudes, and beliefs that have guided our lives to that point and choose others that better align with who we are in the present and where we want to go in the future.

Popular Culture

Exposure to our popular culture has always played an essential role in the kind of people we become. As social beings, we typically adopt the values, attitudes, and beliefs of the culture that is most present in our lives. The initial culture we are exposed to is our family culture, but, as we move out into the world and are exposed to messages from peers, school, extracurricular activities, and media, the influence of family culture diminishes and the impact of our popular culture increases.

In past generations, parents had relatively tight control over the popular culture to which their kids were exposed. Parents had almost complete control over the environment in which they lived including neighborhood, school, houses of worship, and activities. Yes, the broader popular culture could intrude in the form of television, radio, print, and advertising in these media. But in each case, the choices of where we received our popular culture (e.g., three TV channels, one local newspaper, a few magazine options) and exposure to them, in terms of time, was limited.

In previous generations, our homes were a mostly safe haven from popular-cultural influences. They were generally impermeable membranes through which relatively little information could be received and only so much influence could be imposed on our development as children. Homes acted as a sentinel against advertising and other unhealthy messages; thus, we as children were protected against some of the most noxious persuaders that have always existed in popular culture.

As the saying goes, how times have changed. Since the advent of the internet, the impact of popular culture has exploded. The time that young people (and all of us) spend online is so great that it’s difficult understand how there are that many hours in a day that includes sleep, meals, school, work, homework, extracurricular activities, and family and friends. Today, children are exposed to messages from our popular culture almost every waking moment of every day. Our homes, once providing a respite from the onslaught of popular-culture influence, have become entirely permeable membranes through which there is no longer a barrier between us and the popular culture in which we are immersed. In other words, popular culture’s once largely boundaried sphere of influence is now inescapable.

Popular culture is a subtle, yet powerful, force in our lives that we don’t notice because it is all around us and woven into every aspect of our lives. As social beings, we crave a shared cultural experience because it is, in a way, the sinew that connects our family, friends, peers, co-workers, and others in our lives. To reject our popular culture can feel like being left alone on a deserted island. As such, choosing to eliminate popular culture from our lives would seem to be daunting if not downright impossible.

Technology

This dramatic rise in the presence and impact of technology on our lives hasn’t just influenced the extent that popular culture can affect who we become. Technology has become a force in itself that has a well-recognized and growing effect on every aspect of our development, whether, cognitive, emotional, social, educational, political, and beyond. This influence is no longer just a matter of degree, but also of kind; as Marshall McLuhan so presciently stated in 1967,  “the medium is the message.”

Technology, whether the telegraph, radio, television, or computer, has always been driven by the profit motive and much of the use of technology, from past eras to the pre-internet age, involved advertising intended to sell products to its consumers. However, social media had made us the product in the form of our information, data, online usage, and time spent and engagement in the various social media which is then sold to advertisers for huge profits by the likes of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and others. This commoditization of our attention has produced a new field of computer science called “persuasive technology” in which Big Tech spends billions of dollars a year aimed at devising ways to “hook” us on their particular platform and literally change our values, attitudes, beliefs, behaviors, and habits, all intended to increase profit for their shareholders with little regard for whether it is healthy for us or beneficial to our society.

There is a growing body of evidence that technology can impact how we feel about ourselves, how we view others, what we want and buy, our political views, and much more, in some ways for the good, but in many ways for the bad. The challenge with technology’s influence on who we become is that the influencers are often hidden or embedded in the guise of fun, connecting with others, and social good, and their effects are insidious, cumulative, and compounding.

Though, in theory, we could choose to reduce our involvement in technology, as I just mentioned relative to persuasive technology, that shift is easier said than done. Moreover, to disconnect from technology as a force in our lives would mean disconnecting from the social ties that bind us in this tech-driven world in which we now live.

Additionally, research is demonstrating that exerting so-called free will and deciding to eschew technology is meeting resistance not just because of its psychologically and emotionally addictive properties, but, more powerfully, it is causing neurophysiological addiction similar to that experienced with alcohol, drugs, and gambling.

Unexpected Events

This fifth influence is not something that we think of often as having a significant impact on our development. Yet, one leading researcher argues that it is more influential than environmental factors over which more deliberate and premeditated control is possible, for example, parenting and school.

In my 2021 book, Change Your Life’s Direction, I liken our lives to asteroids hurtling through space. Unless a force is exerted on our lives, they will continue to follow their current path until we die. Unexpected events can act like a blunt force on that asteroid that is our lives that causes a shift in trajectory. Unexpected events can be both positive (e.g., meeting your future spouse, getting an unplanned job offer) or negative (e.g., becoming seriously ill, being in a car accident) and may shape your future self in equally unanticipated ways, also in either good or bad ways.

Another way unexpected events affect our development is through genetic switch flipping because unplanned occurrences in life, particularly those with significant emotional import, have the ability to turn on a previously dormant gene. For instance, a death of a parent or the loss of a job may trigger a genetic predisposition to depression. Or exposure to something toxic in the environment can switch on a cancer gene.

Of the five forces I’ve discussed so far, unexpected events are the most elusive and difficult to avoid as an influencer on who they become. By their very nature, we can’t predict or prepare for them. We can’t readily mitigate their impact on our lives. And the shock of unexpected events (and the related trauma of those that are negative) can be both destabilizing and cause our “life inertia” to shift its trajectory in an unhealthy direction. As I describe in my 2019 book, How to Survive and Thrive When Bad Things Happen, at most, the one way we can choose how unanticipated events impact us is in how we respond to them, whether, for example, as a crisis or an opportunity.

In Part II of my two-part series on the forces that shape our lives, I’ll explore whether we actually have free will and, if so, how we can leverage it to resist the above five forces.