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“I hope I make the right decision,” Alicia told me, pondering whether to become a single mom.
“You won’t,” I told her.
“What do you mean I won’t?” she replied, understandably put off.
“I mean very few decisions of this magnitude end up being entirely right or wrong,” I answered.
While there are exceptions, life-altering decisions are generally riddled with ambiguous consequences. For many, for example, the choice to marry ends up being both right and wrong, depending on when you ask them. Sure, we can look back years later and make a retrospective call on whether we took the best course in pursuing a particular career, selecting a spouse or partner, deciding for or against being parents, etc. However, decisions are not lived in hindsight. They are experienced day-to-day, minute-by-minute, so the answer to “Was it right or wrong?” is largely a moving target. What seemed like a great call one day can feel misguided the next, or vice-versa.
“Chances are if you decide not to become a mom, you’ll have times when you’ll feel you made a good call, and other times when you won’t,” I suggested.
“And should I expect the same if I decide to become a mom?” she wondered.
“Probably. There are parents at both extremes—those who absolutely cherish the role and those who loathe it—but most find it a mixed bag,” I replied.
Thoughtful Analysis
When we burden ourselves with the necessity of making the right choice, the excessive psychological pressure makes it tough to decide at all. Does this mean we should simply flip a coin and forgo the cognitive ping-pong? Of course not. For most of us, major decision-making requires a period of thoughtful analysis, worry and rumination. Also, research shows it helps to ponder a decision before falling asleep, which catalyzes the “sleeping on it” approach that enlists one’s intuition. We simply need to think things through before we can give ourselves permission to make a call and move forward, a process associated with better choices but not always better outcomes.
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Why not better outcomes? Well, there is little reliable research supporting the theory that the application of reasoning ensures making good life choices in the long run. Thoughtful analysis and sleeping on it may help with arriving at a decision and feeling settled, but that doesn’t ensure that one has made a good choice for the long term. There are just too many variables at play.
I suspect we espouse rational decision-making to reassure ourselves that, with deliberation, we can control or at least manage the future. This is a common delusion. Long-term decisions will always be based on incomplete information, transitory emotional states and fantasies about might happen next—in short, a flawed predictive model. So, what is a decision-maker to do?
Guided by Intuition
When it comes to major life choices, intuition is often the best guide, although certainly subject to the same long-term miscues as other methods. While intuition has no more predictive power than reasoning or simply following impulses, it arises from a more reliable source. Reasoning is a product of the intellect, which is limited by incomplete data and tunnel vision, and impulses erupt from intense emotional states that cloud judgment. In contrast, intuition emerges from what is fuzzily defined as “the inner self,” that aspect of being in closer contact with one’s spiritual nature.
As author Florence Scovel Shinn wrote, “Intuition is a spiritual faculty and does not explain, but simply points the way.”
Which suggests that making the right choice is not about whether a major decision ultimately turns out well or poorly. It’s about whether that choice “points the way” toward the path you seem destined to follow in this life, one consistent with your nature, values and hopes.
Being on that “right path” doesn’t mean all will be wonderful. But it does mean your decisions will reflect who you are as a person and what you believe to be right and true.
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