Destiny or Choice?

For a long time I have had arguments with people around as well as with the myself....as to whether life is all about choices or is life all about destiny.....

I am a staunch believer in the fact that life is what you make it...its all about choices.....but then there are always some things that you would chose to do or have but it just wont happen.....you do everything possible but finally it may not work in your favor....is there an explanation for this?.....95% hard work some say and 5% luck is what life is all about.....Cant everything in life be achieved with hard work....do we have to rely on luck for even that 5 %?...some may call it luck ...some call it fate...and some call it destiny....and try as much as I want I cant get myself to believe in destiny or whatever you call it....

So the question arises .....what is it that finally influences my life after I have put in all the hard work and made the choices and am ready to do whatever it takes?

We live in a very social environment.....finally it boils down to the fact that I am going to be surrounded by people and what they do will affect the events in my life just like what happens with me would affect their life.....in a manner similar to mine they too take decisions and make choices which I could try and influence or I could try and offer advice when asked.... but finally I have no control over what they do.......and surely it will affect the events in my life....to this I assign the 5%......is this my destiny???....but for someone like me even this is not acceptable....so what do I do???

Which leads me to believe that after you have made your choices and people have made theirs.....there is still something you can do..and that is make a choice as to how much would other peoples choices affect you....so again the 5 % percent uncertainty in your life comes right back under your own control...

Concluding....Life is surely about the choices we make......which accounts for 95 %...and the remaining 5 % ..well its entirely upto me....I can let it remain at the 5 % mark or I can keep working towards reaching that perfect score of 100 and finally when I look back at all the wonderful years of my life sitting on that rocking chair sipping on some scotch and puffing on my pipe I will tell myself..." I did it My Way"...and ol' blue eyes Frank Sinatra will echo my sentiments....