Last weekend, I was having a conversation with my photographer friend and collaborator Andrzej Gruszka about making decisions and how some people freeze when they have to make one. Admittedly, there are easier decisions to make than others, especially if the stakes are high, but not deciding at all is even worse than making the wrong decision. If all the decisions that you’ve made in your life brought you here, to this moment when you are reading this blog post, then you haven’t made too many bad choices, after all, have you?
I know that some people who are reading this post might not be going through the happiest moments of their lives, and probably some of them are due to their past choices. However, making a series of bad choices doesn’t necessarily mean that you will never be able to make the right decision again in your life. Besides, no one is capable of making great decisions 100% of the times. All of our current circumstances are the result of both our good and our bad choices.
I used to have a boss who would tell me that she liked delegating on me some of her tasks because I wasn’t afraid to make decisions. For her, it didn’t matter if I made the right or the wrong choice; what was important was that I always found a way not to stagnate the projects in which I was involved.
When I am faced with a challenging decision, I try to make as much research as I can to make an informed choice. Most of the times, the outcome of your decision is not as important as the process that you took to arrive at said decision. This is particularly true when all of your options will have a positive outcome, even if the paths forward might be completely different.
Another strategy that works for me, whenever possible, is delaying the decision. Gather all the information that you need to make your choice but sit on it for a while. Some people say that procrastinating can be some sort of decision-making process. There are decisions that don’t need to be made right away.
Whichever your decision-making process is, don’t avoid making them because if you don’t make the decision, someone else will make it for you and you won’t have a voice in it. If you make the right decision, you will move forward; if you make the wrong decision, you will learn from your mistake; but, if you don’t do anything, you will never grow.
Photo credit: behind the scenes by Andrzej Gruzska.
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