A path is what leads to an outcome. An outcome is what happens as a result of traversing the path that leads to it. Typically, choosing an outcome will dictate the path you must traverse to arrive there.
Choosing a path only leads to the desired outcome when you know how to get there. This requires a perfect knowledge of the relationship between cause and effect under those circumstances, which hardly anyone has for hardly anything. Because of this, you can pick the outcome or the path, but usually you can’t pick both.
There is a path to every outcome. We do not get to choose what this path is, only whether to discover it and follow it.
God works by cause and effect. He knows the path to reach whatever outcome we desire. All things happen in this world according to the law ordained by God before this world was created.
Whether we recognize it or not, whenever we obtain any outcome, it is by traversing the path God has appointed to obtain it:
20 There is a law, irrevocably decreed in heaven before the foundations of this world, upon which all blessings are predicated—
21 And when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated. (D&C 121)
All outcomes are possible. There is a path leading to each one. The question is whether you are willing to do what it takes to get the outcome, and whether you are willing to receive the outcome in the package it comes in.