Decisions and the Future
How do you think about and plan for the future? I hadn’t really thought about that question much until this year. This year there is a combination of things that have made me pay more attention to how I think about the future and ultimately to decide that I need to change that just a bit.
My Default Thinking - Some Background
I spent several years volunteering to lead disaster recovery efforts for local church congregations. I first did this in Utah and then in Houston. I won’t even start talking about how different those experiences were different.
Those years trained me to think about and plan for the possible disasters we might face as families and as a community or congregation. It was everything from a natural disaster to helping families learn how to plan ahead for things like potential job losses. That time in my life had a significant impact on how my thought processes.
The biggest thing it did was train my brain to think of the future as full of potential pitfalls (disasters) and to try and build an action plan for each one. Not only did my brain starting thinking this way when it came to family preparedness or disaster recovery planning but it translated into much of the rest of my life as well.
Fast forward to 2020. Anyone else find themselves trying to anticipate all of the pitfalls we have and continue to face this year? As you can imagine, my default thinking neural pathways have been in overdrive most of this year. I have had to be deliberate in re-training my brain to not try and anticipate everything scenario associated with the pandemic, economic changes and everything else that is going on.
Thinking Decisions are Permanent
Here is the other thing I have found myself doing, and I don’t think I’m alone in this, is think that I have to make every decision perfectly because the decision is permanent and unchangeable. While there may be some key decisions where you really do need to get them just right, that logic doesn’t apply to the vast majority of the decisions we make in life. So thinking that every important decision is irreversible or has to be perfect to avoid a disaster can place a very heavy burden on us and in some cases, it can even paralyze us into not making decisions.
What I’m Trying to Do Now
If any of you find yourself facing similar changes or thought processes, you may be hoping that I have a great answer for how to overcome this. I’m going to be straight up and tell you that I don’t have any definite answers. But what I am willing to share is what I am trying to do now.
First, I am trying to manage the fear that always tries to worm it’s way into my mental processes. This can happen with big decisions or even small ones. It also tries to creep in anytime a situation doesn’t go the way that I think it is supposed to go. And if I allow it in, it doesn’t go away even after the decision is made. It lingers. So first and foremost, be aware when fear is a factor and make a deliberate decision about how to deal with it.
Second, I’m trying to remind myself that most decisions are not irreversible or permanent. We can almost always course correct, or even change a decision. That doesn’t meant there won’t be consequences or things you have to work through if you make a wrong decision, but that doesn’t make them permanent.
Third, I’m trying to remind myself that if I never take a risk (not knowing the exact right decision always seems to be a risk to me), then I will only stay on the safe path. I’m not saying I want to become a huge risk taker, but I would like to get better about seeing what’s at the end of the riskier (and usually more difficult journey. If you wait to have all the information, to overcome fear or keep thinking that every decision is the be all end all, then you won’t take risks because rarely in life will you have all of that information.
Summary
All of us face more decisions in our lives than we can imagine. How we process the information we have at our disposal and how we make decisions will have a great impact on our lives. I have learned in my life that I can definitely overthink important decisions (and even a lot of small ones). As I have indicated above, I try and plan out every contingency and because of many of the things I mentioned above, I am pretty risk adverse.
But what I am learning and working on right now is remembering that not all decisions are permanent or final. In fact, most of them are not. And I’m also working on not allowing fear to prevent me from taking calculated risks. I’m always going to try and have contingency plans to mitigate risk and want as much information as I can have before making a decision. But once I reach that point, I do need to take a step forward even if it’s into a little bit of the unknown.
I think there will be more to come on this one…