Making difficult decisions

At the heart of all of our difficulties lies the issue of finding our desires impossible to fulfil in the moment of desiring fulfilment. This lies at root cause of procrastination and a precise focus upon discovering the impossible issue and then resolving it is paramount to making progress. That’s the essential task that we face from moment to moment when we seek to deliver results that we never had the capability of fulfilling before or never did in this particular way before. However, sometimes when we discover the root cause we find that a single solution is not always forthcoming. Sometimes many paths of possibility open up to us and indecisiveness can strike us if we do not know how to discern our approach for moving forward.

Whilst we can never know for sure which choice out of a series of choices will deliver the result that we want in the best possible manner, i.e. low risk of non-fulfilment and better odds for delivering more than expected, we can at least consider guidelines for helping us to make informed decisions.

In creative fields the choices available to bring a creation to fruition are often infinite but often guidelines of ‘best practice’ exist that can support easier decision making based upon the experience and exploration of others and upon commonly perceived norms. At times you might want to do things very differently to established practice but if you are not sure then deferring to guidelines can take you further forward.

In the early days of writing for this blog I often found myself indecisive about how to structure and present articles and especially how to edit them. I was particularly held back by the notion that I might somehow humiliate myself by posting nonsensical or controversial or half-baked ideas. Once I isolated that concern I could make an editing guideline to cross check for such things and so I could more easily take decisions and do so in a consistent manner. This has now become a core competency so that I don’t often need to refer to my guidelines but sometimes it still proves necessary when I find myself stuck.

At times though, no best practice exists or else we don’t feel that following what others did is necessarily suitable. This means dealing with uncertainty and dealing with the risk that a regrettable decision could be taken. In this case we must assess the balance of probabilities and judge which path will more likely lead to the fulfilment of desires. This can prove emotionally difficult so acceptance of several key points can help to rebalance the expectations of desires being fulfilled.

• Accept that for this particular issue that no choice can ever be 100% ‘safe’ and so a risk must be entered into
• Accept that later on hindsight might show a decision to have proven unwise but that in the moment of taking the decision you did what seemed right and that you accept responsibility all the same
• Accept that learning and getting good experience sometimes can only come from taking poor choices and dealing with the consequences
• Accept that some action is normally better that no action (unless that single action leads to irreparable and permanent damage - such as committing a crime)

Under difficult circumstances taking a decision can prove very difficult. Making a poor decision is not really the issue. It is whether you are willing to deal with the consequences of a poor decision that really matters. If you develop great resources of competence and problem solving ability then you can usually recover from all but the most devastating of wrong choices.

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