Today let’s talk about indecision.
Do you ever find it tough to make a decision?
I learned in business school that not to decide is to decide. Indecision is a form of decision-making, but it sure wasn’t getting me anywhere. I discovered that growing up in an alcoholic family, if I didn’t make a decision, I didn’t take a risk, and was less exposed to bad things happening. I’ve had to learn to confront the fear of making a decision, taking a stand, and realizing that it doesn’t always lead to painful or negative outcomes. I had to start slowly, and build confidence in my decision making ability. I also had to accept that not everyone would like my course of action, and let that be OK. As I have built trust in the process of taking action, it has been very freeing.
Have you ever struggled with making decisions?
Photo Credit
“ponder” by striatic @ flickr.com Creative commons – Some rights reserved
Dan L. Hays offers encouragement for adult children of alcoholics.
The podcasts of these episodes can be found at: Minute to Freedom
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One of the things I’ve learned with age is to avoid attacking people who have made poor decisions under circumstances where I personally would have avoided making the decision. It is easy to invoke 20:20 hindsight and boost my own self esteem at the expense of another by imagining that I would not only have acted differently (because, as the author mentions, inaction when a decision is called for is a decision) but have pursued a positive choice that produced a better result.
I also grew up in an alcoholic family and had a decision-making role thrust on me at an inappropriately young age, with a fair amount of recrimination if the results were not good. This didn’t, oddly enough, make me indecisive or an avoider of responsibility – rather it made me a person who was willing to take responsibility and make unpopular decisions, and was pretty thick-skinned about the flak that taking on such a role produces – to a point. Learning when I needed to step back for my own sanity came later, and was a very hard lesson. A person who is willing to make difficult choices is liable to be maneuvered into a situation, especially in the workplace, where all of the possible courses of action have significant negative results, only to be scapegoated for correctly choosing the lesser of evils.
Great observations, Martha! We did get thrust into a decision making role at an early age, with various implications later in life. I hear you on being the one to make decisions and take responsibility – I think some of my decision avoidance later was because of having to do make decisions way too young!
Dan