Accepting Bad Decisions
La version française de cet article est disponible ici.
Last week, I wrote about how the fear of regret pushes many people to avoid decisions. Of course, overcoming this phenomenon is easier said than done. One key to being able to do so is to learn to accept the possibility of a bad decision.
We are all human, and as a result we all make a wrong choice now and then. However, consider this: even a poor decision is better than a decision not taken.
First, not taking a decision is in itself a decision. For example, when you are driving a car, if you cannot decide whether to turn left or right, ultimately you will either stop completely or keep driving straight. Time doesn’t stop to wait while you make up your mind. You have then effectively chosen a different path — one that didn’t even figure on your list of initial choices.
Second, if you aren’t ready to accept the possibility that a decision you take turns out to be the wrong one, then you implicitly accept that other people — or, worse, chance — will decide for you. Even though this might seem harmless for certain decisions, a series of seemingly minor decisions eventually adds up, and can significantly alter the state of affairs.
Third, each time you forgo a decision, you also miss an opportunity to improve your decision-making abilities. We learn through our mistakes; when we learn how to walk, we fall, we pick ourselves back up, and we slowly adjust our approach by taking into account the factors that led to our previous fall. The same is true for decision-making: we gain valuable information from each failure, which allows us to avoid similar errors of judgement in the future. Avoiding a decision makes it all too easy to simply move on without analysing what went wrong, based on the erroneous conclusion that since you didn’t actively make the decision, you had no control over the outcome. You have missed out on a learning opportunity.
Bad decisions are a part of life. Nobody is immune from failure, which in any event is necessary for learning. Accepting this, and letting go of the fear of taking a bad decision, is crucial for continued growth.
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