DECISIONS

WHAT should we do, where should we go, what do wear, buy etc etc? Deciding what to do or not to do makes up the greater part of our thoughts in our daily lives. Most decisions are mundane choices so when a decision we make is the right one, we take no particular notice of it, in fact our action is robotic and we usually remain completely unaware that we made a decision at all.

If our decision is wrong however, we do take notice and maybe after a lot of swearing and cursing, promise ourselves to try not to make that same mistake again. We regret any wrong decisions we make, especially if in hindsight we believe we would have been better off by deciding differently, consequently we blame ourselves for our own stupidity.

Typical statements at such times might be, ‘Why did this have to happen to me?’ ‘Why did I make that stupid choice?’ ‘If only I had let things stay as they were!’ ‘I wish I could have my time over again!’ ‘How could I have been such a bloody idiot!’

Before we can regret any decision in our life we first have to experience the event that caused us to decide, otherwise we could never have experienced either the satisfaction of making the right decision or the regret of making the wrong decision. Nothing would have happened therefore, we would never have lost, gained or learned anything.

We need to make wrong decisions more than right decisions to make our life work. We survived and evolved as a species by making lots of wrong decisions and learning the lessons they held in the process.

A wrong decision helps us to learn, for once the lesson is learned, we are less likely to make that same mistake again, allowing us to then make the right decision next time, thus continue to evolve as a human being, so – a wrong decision is really just a right decision in its infancy.

It is the wrong decisions we make contrasted against the right decisions that allows us to correct the wrong next time a similar situation crops up – so without a wrong, we cannot have a right…

Dan’s Quote: “Life is like eating oranges, we can’t appreciate their sweetness…
______________Unless we suck the occasional lemon.”- DJB

Inspiration for this chapter came from the writings of Joel Kramer, Eckhart Tolle and others.