Decisions

I am in the business of helping people making decisions. I like to think that its a natural talent, one that I took years to discover.

I have applied this in several contexts - helping professionals make career decisions, single people choose partners, married people stay in marriages, organisations build/ cull teams, businesses make customer-centric decisions, politicians ace elections, etc.

So people often ask - how do I know I am making the right decision?

Actually, “right” decisions are ephemeral.

We make choices in the moment based on the information we have at a certain point of time under a certain context. We can hope for certain outcomes, but we do not have any control over them. That’s the extent of our freewill.

Now my question to you is - will YOU still respect YOUR choice irrespective of the outcome (post facto)?

If it’s a YES, then that’s probably the right decision. If it’s a NO, then you are asking me the wrong question.

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Many years ago, there was this guy in the scene. When we were together, it was great. When we were not, he was not very communicative. He used to say that he is jaded from his past experiences, and that I was a ray of sunshine in his life.

Flattering no doubt, but eventually, his inability to make an effort drained my enthusiasm. I don’t know if someone else in my place would’ve made the same decision, but one month in, I chose to say goodbye to this potential relationship.

I didn’t make a pros and cons list. I didn’t consult friends. I just remember meeting him at a cafe one evening and saying I was done. I have never looked back on this decision and thought - what if I’d waited?

Not once.

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Most people I know make decisions intuitively, it’s an inbuilt survival instinct. Sadly, we’re conditioned to not honour this instinct, instead we try to hold it hostage to some retro-fitted rationale.

Some people are good at this reverse engineering, while others are not. While substantiating your instinct with arbit rationale may be critical in a team setting, there is no need for explanations when you’re making a decision for yourself.

We’re not accustomed to such independent thinking, especially in communal societies like India where we are conditioned to always weigh in on the consequences of our actions on others, or be “accountable” to society.

In the process, we end up making choices that result in sub-optimal outcomes for all parties involved. Or even worse, we feel so overwhelmed with having to choose at all, and stall (which by the way is also a choice).

It’s the saddest thing ever because literally, this is the only opportunity for exercising our freewill (limited to the moment), and we “choose” to pass.

Should I get back with my ex? Should I tell my wife that I need some breathing space? Should I continue waiting for this guy who won’t commit to me? Should I go on another date even if I didn’t feel a thing on the first?

Endless list of decisions, big and small, for which we seek certainty of outcomes. Based on these outcomes, we ascertain if the decision was the “right” one or not. So, it’s not the decision that we’re concerned about, it’s the outcome.

I will get back with my ex only if I know this relationship is going to last forever. I am only going to tell my wife that I need space if I know I’ll get it without making her mad. I’ll only wait for this guy if I know he’ll commit to me at the end of the wait. I’ll only go on another date if I feel something for sure this time.

But there is no way to know any of this for certain, is there? So, what do we do?

We make a move, hope and pray that we don’t regret it. Things may not turn out the way you want them to, and you may learn a thing or two from these decisions, but the key to making a good decision is to NEVER wish you’d chosen differently.

That’s it really.

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What I’m reading/ watching/ listening to:

This Divided Island by Samanth Subramanian: I love the style of writing. Reading a second book on Sri Lanka in the last one month, it’s interesting to experience diverse writing styles of different writers on the same theme.

Tiny Beautiful Things: Watched this show on Hotstar, and it rekindled a long lost fantasy of mine - to become an anonymous advice columnist. It’s not too late I guess?

Shapely Gal song: Psychic Elephant by L.Shankar, Jan Garbarek and Palle Mikelborg.