"You" as Chooser
From the writings of Rav Dessler, we can derive another practical definition of "you" - the "chooser." All growth in life involves making good choices in the face of challenge and adversity - and "you" are the one who is choosing.
choices
Rav Dessler (Kuntress HaBechirah, Part 1, Ch.1) illustrates this idea with an example: A man smokes a pack of cigarettes a day. Every night, he wakes up with chest pains and vows never to smoke another cigarette again. When he awakens in the morning, his addiction soon makes itself felt and he craves a smoke. At first, he resists, but, as the craving grows, he says to himself, "I will smoke just one cigarette. After all, one alone can't hurt me," and he lights up. Not long afterward, the urge returns and he uses the same rationalization for the second one
and the third. That night, the pain returns and he repeats the vow. Were this man to experience acute pain immediately upon taking his first puff, he would surely give up smoking altogether. The fact that the pain is delayed allows the cycle of self-deception to continue as he tells himself that "one cigarette won't hurt me.”

Rav Dessler asks: What causes a person to adopt the fallacious argument of "one cigarette won't harm me," and ignore the truth that "one cigarette will lead to another," which he knows from firsthand experience is the reality? Rav Dessler argues that it can't be that the man's will to smoke is perverting his reasoning process, leading him to conclude that the pleasure of smoking makes it worth the subsequent pain. If that were so, why the self-deception of "one cigarette won't harm me"? He should simply smoke with the full knowledge that it will hurt later.

He concludes that there is something other than the two competing wills that determines his choice. That something else is the person himself. HE is the one who chooses to deflect his mind from the truth and adopt the fallacy that one cigarette won't harm him. He could instead say to himself, "What is the point of pretending? If I smoke this one then I will wake up tonight with chest pains." Instead, HE deceives himself into believing that it will only be one.

Rav Dessler bestows the title of "fools" upon those who claim that the will to smoke is the true cause of this ridiculous daily routine. He argues that the will to live is surely greater than the will to smoke and a greater will should overpower a weaker one. The person himself. however, has the power to deliberately ignore the truth and accept falsehood in its place. The outcome of this is that when a person makes the claim, "I smoke because I am powerless to stop," the response should be, "No, you smoke because you choose to and you have no one to blame but yourself."

Rav Dessler teaches that choice lies completely in our hands and there are no forces that control us. People who have never challenged the pull of their harmful physical desires won't ever be able to understand this, because they are convinced that they are at the mercy of those compulsive needs. Such people have never made a free-choice decision and live under the illusion that human action is controlled by external or internal forces.

With his poignant words, Rav Dessler brings forth an axiom held by successful people and lacking in those who are unsuccessful: "I am fully responsible for my actions because I alone am in control of choices." While there is a small subset of people who are choice- impaired due to various life circumstances, the majority of us are fully responsible for the choices we make.

People sometimes say things like, "I can't help myself. I am controlled by my anger/anxiety/fear/indecision/addiction/shortcomings," and the like. Blaming is a common theme in today's culture and it has perhaps even become socially incorrect to require that a person accept full responsibility for his actions. We may try to lay the blame on our society, upbringing, boss, weaknesses, addictions, or the "system," but we must realize that by doing so we are choking off any opportunity for growth. Successful people never hide behind excuses. We all make mistakes; the difference between success and failure is whether or not we take ownership of those mistakes. Even if in certain circumstances we may not be responsible for what happened to us, we do remain fully responsible for our responses and resulting actions.