The doubt of difficult decisions

When faced with and then having made a difficult decision, it can be easy to wonder if you made the right choice. Was one of the other options better? This typically occurs because we are thinking of the choices available to us in terms of possibility. Consider the phrase, think of all the possibilities.

Possibility is very black and white. Something is possible or it is not. The banana is edible or it is not. It is currently raining or it is not. I am a fighter pilot or I am not. That can give us the feeling that there’s a 50/50 chance another, in some ways more attractive, choice was or is indeed the right one. Is it possible another choice was the right one? Yes. This becomes especially frustrating when the choice we didn’t make is extremely attractive sans the fatal flaw that convinced us not to choose it. We want to and sometimes do overlook or discount that flaw in order to taste the sweet elixir of the perfect and unfortunately imaginary best option. Possibility creates a distorted view of the landscape. Instead, we should look at probability.

Probability is more nuanced. Let’s say you are making a decision to choose A or B. You are leaning strongly towards B even though you wish you could choose A. You’re not likely to choose A because despite its attractiveness, you know in the long run it’s not the best option. That feeling is one best embraced rather than avoided. What you are feeling in that moment is probability. Perhaps without even realizing it you’ve worked out that the probability of A being the right choice is low while B is quite high. The more you focus on why you feel this way about each option, the more strength you will muster that you’ve made the right one. However, should this analysis make you reconsider, then perhaps the original decision was made in haste.

I know myself well enough to know that when someone attempts to push me into making a decision that I don’t yet need and am currently not ready to make, I usually choose not to decide. Of course, as Neil Peart wrote in the lyrics of the Rush song, Free Will, “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.” Still, difficult decisions are also difficult because they cannot be put off indefinitely. They impede us from moving forward. Jim Rohn said it perfectly, “You cannot make progress without making decisions.”

Difficult decisions are those that don’t lend themselves to trying all options and then choosing the best one. They also usually those that once made cannot be unmade. There’s almost nothing worse that making such a decision in haste. I say almost nothing because what is worse is having made such a decision and then immediately realizing it was the wrong one. I read about a man who decided to kill himself by jumping off a very tall bridge. He said the moment his feet left the bridge he realized he’d made a horrible mistake. No matter how committed he may have felt, prior to jumping he had not yet actually made his decision. Up to that point, he could have climbed back over the rail and gone about his day. Fortunately for him, he had been a competitive diver in high school and thus knew exactly how to hit the water with the least amount of impact. He still broke several bones and in the near freezing, swift water current, he might not have survived anyway. As luck would have it, someone on a boat nearby had seen him jump and rescued him. His was a rare case of having the opportunity to reconsider a very difficult decision.

In most cases, a difficult decision won’t afford such an opportunity. Difficult decisions are difficult because we either lack information (which may be anywhere from unlikely to impossible to get) or because we want to ignore the obvious. We want to pretend for a moment that we live in another universe that is in all ways exactly like the one we are in now but where another, usually easier to swallow, option becomes truly the most attractive since it’s now missing the fatal flaw it has in our very real universe.

Even when your gut is telling you which decision to make, sometimes doubt will remain. In fact, doubt will almost always be present when the decision is a difficult one because that is what makes it difficult. In those times it’s important to remember that anyone can do the right thing when there is no doubt. Bravery is doing the right thing in the face of doubt.

When you next must make a difficult decision, take the time you have (as sometimes the time you need is not available) to first consider the probabilities rather than the possibilities.

Then be brave.