The Myth of Free Will and How to Influence Your Decisions

Decision-making isn’t conscious.

That might sound like a radical claim, but neuroscience has yet to provide any evidence for free will. In fact, even the definition of free will doesn’t really stand up to scrutiny. The idea that we consciously make autonomous choices—independent of genetics, upbringing, mood, culture, or even the temperature of the room—is a fantasy.

Every decision you’ve ever made has been influenced by forces beyond your awareness. When you look closely, it becomes clear that free will, at least in the way most people imagine it, doesn’t exist.

Why Free Will Falls Apart

If you study people deeply enough, their decisions stop looking random. They start looking predictable.

That “sudden” decision to quit a job, commit a crime, or lash out at a stranger—on the surface it looks spontaneous. But if you knew the full backstory—the stress buildup, the belief systems, the addictions, the cultural programming, the emotional state—it all makes sense.

Take a person who randomly throws an egg at someone. To an outsider, that looks impulsive, maybe even insane. But if you had access to the history that led up to that moment, you’d see it was inevitable: the childhood experiences, the anger patterns, the current frustrations. The “impulse” was really the outcome of years of momentum.

There’s no mysterious soul or ghost in the machine making free choices. It’s all brain processes, conditioning, and subconscious programming playing out in real time.

Why This Matters: Understanding Others

When you recognize that people are not conscious agents operating with free will, their harmful behavior stops feeling so personal.

That doesn’t mean tolerating abuse. It means you stop being emotionally rattled by it. You understand that they aren’t choosing maliciously in some free-floating vacuum. They’re doing the only thing they can, given the tidal wave of influences that carried them there.

Most philosophies, dating back thousands of years, recognized that “bad” behavior is usually ignorance rather than malice. People don’t know better, or they lack the tools to do better.

It’s no fluke that most Christians come from Christian countries, or that most sports fanatics had parents who bonded with them over the game. Culture, family, and early experiences determine so much of who we are. The idea that someone simply “chose” these things freely doesn’t stand up to reality.

Nobody Chooses the Worst Option

Here’s an important insight: everybody is always making the best possible decision they can at the time.

That doesn’t mean it’s a good decision in an objective sense. People steal cars, quit jobs abruptly, relapse into addiction. But in that moment, with the state of mind, conditioning, and tools available to them, that was the best option they could access.

The car thief has the capacity not to steal—but in the moment of theft, that restraint wasn’t available. Their mind was filled with rationalizations (“I need to pay this debt,” “They’re rich, they won’t miss it”), and their inhibitions had eroded. By the time they saw the keys in the ignition, it wasn’t really a choice anymore.

When you see this clearly, you stop moralizing other people’s behavior as “evil” or “deliberately bad.” You see that they’re simply limited in what they can access at the time.

So Where Does That Leave Us?

If free will doesn’t exist in the way we think it does, does that mean we’re powerless? Not at all.

You may not be able to consciously control every decision in the moment—but you can influence your future decisions through reflection and feedback.

Here’s how I do it:

• Journaling daily: I write down the choices I made, what I was trying to achieve, and whether those decisions helped.

• Detached observation: I review past behavior without judgment—simply asking, “Did this move me closer to my goals or not?”

• Course correction: When I see a pattern that doesn’t serve me, I remind myself of the costs and consciously highlight alternatives that work better.

This isn’t about controlling the next decision with sheer willpower. It’s about programming your subconscious through repetition and feedback so that when the next moment comes, your mind naturally leans toward better options.

Over time, reflection reshapes decision-making at a deep level. When you face a familiar situation again, the memory of past mistakes helps you avoid repeating them.

Influencing Others

This same principle works with other people.

Rather than judging someone as “an asshole,” you can present them with new information that might alter their future choices. For example, instead of shaming a car thief, you could talk to them about the impact of theft on the victim. That empathy might create guilt, and that guilt can influence future decisions.

When I worked rehabilitating criminals, this approach often worked. Not always, but often enough to prove the point: people don’t need condemnation, they need better inputs—feedback that reshapes the way their subconscious calculates choices.

The Paradox: No Free Will, Yet Freedom

So here’s the paradox: you don’t have free will in the traditional sense, but you do have influence.

You are not an autonomous soul making random conscious choices. You are the product of genetics, upbringing, mood, culture, and beliefs. But by reflecting on your behavior, by measuring outcomes, and by bravely accepting feedback, you can shape the trajectory of your future self.

That’s where real freedom lies—not in making decisions independent of influence, but in deliberately creating better influences for yourself.

Journaling, reflection, feedback, and compassion toward others aren’t just nice ideas—they’re the tools that let us evolve beyond the conditioning we were born with.

Final Thought

When someone hurts you, remember: they didn’t freely choose to be cruel. They acted from ignorance, pain, or conditioning. That doesn’t excuse the behavior, but it explains it—and frees you from unnecessary resentment.

When you make poor decisions yourself, don’t punish yourself as if you deliberately sabotaged your life. Instead, reflect, review, and use the experience as feedback to reprogram your future.

You’ll never be outside of influence. But you can become the kind of person who consciously shapes those influences toward a better life.

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