Monday, May 5, 2008

I decided becasue...

I have been thinking recently about how I make choices. Most people would say I am deceive and I can be. Easy stuff is easy. Chicken on sale - great we are having that for dinner. Done! I can get dressed in five minutes - generally able to decide very fast what I am going to wear. Done.

The bigger choices are really harder for me. I have many times made a choice by deciding what I did not want. I call this the ruling things out method. I rather settled on my major and college that way. I knew I did not want to spend my life in a windowless lab - so chemistry and biological sciences were out. I am good at math but did not want to mess with no real numbers or the 4th dimension or whatever. So then I began working through the subjects I liked and narrowed it down from there. For instance, I like children but a room full of them scare the bejeezes out of me - so teaching was out. Maybe high school I always thought, but then decided a room full of attitude would make me nuts, so I ruled it out.

I have used this method of decision making on and off for years. I am not sure it is the best method.

I also have felt over the years I have had to defend or justify my reasons for deciding something. In some circumstances that is reasonable - in others not so much. In professional situations I can see the value of outline the decision making process or offering supportive arguments to back up a given course of action. Otherwise I think it is ok to just decide and move forward. I am not good at that. I worry about criticism or I worry about what people will think and well I worry.

I am committing to myself that I am going to try and break this habit. I can want what I want and I am old enough to decide what I am going to go for or after and it is my choice and I am am just going to go for it. I need not defend those choices or justify them or rationalize. I am a smart, sane woman. I am a thinker. I will make the right choice for me and what others think is not an issue. What I think is important.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

i heard someone say that there are no bad decisions. even if you look back on one and think you should have gone another way, it was the best decision you could make with the information you had and the mindset you were in.

no regrets.