Not all aspects of a recent big adventure in future-shaping my life have worked out as I expected them to, and I’m currently backtracking from two major figurative cul-de-sacs.
And I’m a little pissed off if I’m honest, not with the situations I now find myself in, but with the fact that I’m so much of a dummy that I got into them in the first place.
But it reminds me once again that the worst thing about hindsight is the power it has to blind me to my own courage. I’m the sort of guy who tends to perpetually downgrade my own tolerance for really disruptive decisions, which is damaging considering that like most people, I’ve made so many of them.
What happens is that when things go right, I give myself a mental high five and congratulate myself on my general awesomeness. When they go wrong however, I tend to kick myself most violently for being such an idiot.
And I do that even though I know that both reactions are way out of perspective because actually, the process of making the decision that led to either outcome was fundamentally the same.
I’m well-enough mentally and emotionally balanced to have a pretty standard decision-making process. It begins with a random, often reckless emotional whim, which for the most part I’m able to contain by pouring some logic into the mix, and then it’s all allowed to cool before I actually do anything.
Call it robotic, but when you’re prone to reckless emotional whims like I am, you need to create a process.
That may mean I take weeks to make a decision. It may happen in just a few minutes. Either way, generally when I’ve decided to do something, I’m pretty certain that I’m comfortable with it.
Which is why I remind myself that it’s most critical to judge my decisions not by the end result but by the courage it took to make them in the first place.
Because whether the result is a triumphant victory or a total disaster, it likely started out as one hell of a good idea.
