I met a lady at my son’s bus stop today and we started chatting. It was very sad to see her justifying her decision to work in an office. She said that she is educated and worked hard to carve a niche for herself and she cannot let go of all that for her child.
She felt she had done ample research to see if there were any bad effects on children if the mother was working. On the contrary, she found children of working mothers were more independent. Besides she was expecting a huge salary raise in the near future, imagine what that could do to the child’s future !
It set me thinking…what makes one person decide one thing and another something quite contrary to it? Can our decisions be termed as good or bad? And who decides which decision is good or bad ?
Well! For starters, we all know we make decisions based on our schemas or our values that were instilled in us from childhood by our parents, school, society, and our nurturing or environment in which we were brought up.
As for a decision being good or bad, I feel there are no good or bad decisions. Based on the outcome of those decision we label the decision as good or bad. So it depends on the outcome which at the time of deciding cannot be predicted. Seriously can you really predict the outcome of a particular decision? According to Edward De Bono each decision has millions of outcomes limited only by our imagination. For example deciding something as simple as ‘how to use a spoon’ has so many outcomes:
- To eat food
- To hang it upside down as wind chime
- To look at its back and draw the image (trust me it comes out very unusual)
- To flick peas across the table with it :-)
Emotional: does it feel right in your heart and will it benefit someone in some way?
Logical : what is it costing me in terms of time and effort and is it worth it?
Once you make a decision, stick to it with confidence. No need to justify it to anyone, not even you.
Rationalization is a way to quieten a guilty conscience.
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