Life is full of decisions. Sometimes people make decisions that affect you and other times your decisions affect others. There are some decisions that anyone can make and others that you should make for yourself or others.
We are trying to teach our children the value of making wise decisions. Our older son, who is 6, often replies to a choice with “whichever one you want me to have.” While that is awful kind of him to take what he is given, he also needs to learn to make decisions for himself and learn that with decisions comes responsibility. That, I believe, is why so many people are indecisive…once you choose something you exclude everything else. We don’t like those consequences so we either don’t decide (until the last minute…which is why signup sheets never work) or we let someone else decide for us (so they can take the blame when things go south). Both of those results are often an inconvenience to others.
Another thing I see happening is that we can default into allowing other people to make the decisions under the guise that others will be happier if they make their own decisions. In marriage, this can happen where one spouse ends up having to make every decision and gets over burdened. Our attempt to be considerate and make the other person happier ends up having the opposite effect!
Don’t be afraid to make a decision. Often the consequences for not making one are greater than the consequence of choosing poorly.
One Response
It occurred to me that if you make a decision early enough, you might then have the chance to correct it before things go critical, if you’ve made the wrong choice. However, I often wish that I didn’t suffer from ‘cold feet’ on decision-making; but, I can’t help feeling it arises from my parents, who followed a philosophy of wait-and-see until the last possible moment and then act decisively. I think to carry that off, you need the benefit of experience, and your timing has to be spot on..