First of all, it’s hard enough for us to remove ourselves from a state of inertia and try something new. We tend to get comfortable very easily and don’t really make any effort for change as long as the going is good.
It’s only when things don’t really go our way that we tend to sit up and take notice of opportunities suitable for us. Our approach to decision-making tends to be more reactive than proactive most of the time.
Of course there are individuals who plot their path in life, personally and professionally, well in advance and take every effort to follow through with their plans. Most of us, however, strive passively towards achieving something.
We always hope everything works out as we expected. And sometimes it does.
But often this achievement is somehow tainted. In a seemingly cruel twist of fate, we either don’t want this anymore or worse still, even if we do want it, we have to give it up.
Life just doesn’t seem fair. And I know we’ve all heard that one before. Such situations lead to two scenarios: one, the Forbidden Fruit Syndrome, and the other, the Sour Grapes Syndrome.
In the first scenario, we keep pursuing things which we know we probably don’t really want or which are obviously out of reach. Somehow the chase seems exciting to us. Even though it does take its toll on us mentally and probably physically as well. When we do achieve this result, we somehow keep looking for ways to let this opportunity go. Subconsciously finding excuses to not make a difficult decision. And taking the easy way out. At the point where the actual decision has to be made, we wonder how we got ourselves into this mess anyway. Is it better to have no choice at all rather than have to make a difficult decision?
In the second scenario, we tend to shy away from the very process of decision-making. Avoiding all situations where a decision needs to be made. In this process we probably give up opportunities which might be very good for us. Either we are thinking “Why rock the boat?”. Or, having been through a difficult decision-making process in the past, and being once bitten, twice shy, we somehow convince ourselves that we’re happy the way we are and there’s no need for any change at all. Even at the expense of not realizing our own potential.
Either way, we tend to deviate from the optimum path and tend towards an extreme. Which by the way, is not a good thing in any given situation.
We must eventually realize that no one decision or choice is ever going to give us everything at once. More often than not, something we want always comes at a price of something we already have. And only we can decide whether the want is worth the sacrifice of the have.
But, all said and done, we have to learn to take hard decisions. Running away from a decision or decision-making is only going to postpone things to tomorrow. And by then, there will probably be more variables in the equation which will complicate the situation even more and make the decision even harder.
Most things in life have to be learnt the hard way. And decision-making is surely one of them.