Lots of us spend endless amounts of time worrying about decisions, especially when it comes to the big life issues - career, family, friends, finances. We worry about whether a decision will take us closer to our goals, bring a sense of fulfillment or help us achieve our dreams.
Decisions are easy to make if there is no consideration given to consequences. This is probably one area where humans differ significantly from other species - the understanding of consequences. Another area is probably the consideration of the concept of 'apparent remaining time'. I might come back to this latter in a future post.
For now I want to consider the importance of consequences, especially with respect to my experiences around career decisions. In my life I have made, and not made, many decision about my career, based on perceived consequences. This is what I have found.
If your decision's consequences only impact you (at least in your perception, the reality is different), then decision making can feel liberating and empowering and is generally not too stressful. Making the decision can be a way to take control of yourself. It can almost be done in a quantitative manner, balancing pros and cons, weighing personal benefit against personal risk. This seems to me like it would be easy for anyone to do, and taking the time to create these pros and cons lists allows you to prepare for and take ownership of the likely consequences.
However, I feel that the more you begin to consider the consequences of your decision from more perspectives (those of other people, the community, the environment) the more difficult decision making becomes. This may be personal for me, but part of the complexity seems to be borne from the desire to have all consequences positive, or at least as minimally negative as possible (I want win-win outcomes). The more subjects that are involved in your consideration of consequences, the more likely you are that some of the outcomes will not be positive, and you then have to start weighting the importance of those outcomes.
How, in such a situation, do you weight subjects to ensure that you have the most positive outcome in the end? Do consequences for your family out weigh consequences for the environment, or for some other family? This raises internal struggles and is part of what defines our character as individuals I suppose.
I realise no man is an island. Making decisions often involves our interactions with others. Two important groups, in my mind are what I will call our Cheer-leaders and External-influencers. Over the next couple of posts I explore more thoughts on these two groups of people in our lives, as they relate to my decision making experiences.
