[meric]

I'm not going to convince you, but in my experience I find it to be true. The more I am focused on the present, the more the choices I do pick appear to be the obviously good ones. The other choices merely clouds my life, like the OP, trying to pushing things through faster, experiencing gridlock, and then getting labelled as toxic. If we know that's what the consequence of a choice is like, it'd be obvious not to pick it, none of it is enjoyable. It so happens these obviously bad choices in hindsight all happen to be picked when I am too attached to some future outcome, and all the good choices I do make, I was not attached to the future, I made them by being immersed as the present, picking the obviously good choice.

By good choice I mean one I would never regret no matter what the outcome was, and instead would have regretted if I never made it.

That's what I mean by choices being merely an illusion. All I can pick is the present, or the illusion of being in control of the future.