This fall I will be teaching a course at Portland Community College called "Decision Making". The irony of this of course is that I am terrible at making decisions. Not only do I tend to be hasty, but I also change my mind. A lot.
It seems obvious that this is do in part to my hastiness. I make a fly by the seat of my pants decision and shortly there after come to my senses/change my mind. Sadly, this does not always happen before I have executed my less than thoroughly thought out plan. While I used to think this process made me interesting and free-spirited, I'm not exactly convinced that is the truth. Now don't misunderstand me, I do not have any regrets, but I have come to learn that this may not be the best way to go about making decisions.
The other thing standing in the way of my being a good decision maker is frankly a bit of laziness. I will be exceptionally zealous about the pending decision and do an abundance of research (I do love doing research) in order to make an informed choice. Yet in the end will almost always go with whatever option seems the easiest. This rarely pays off in the happiness or satisfaction departments. Instead I end up anxious, wondering what the other path would have looked like.
I can think of only one circumstance in which I let my heart make my decision. It was the time I did all that soul searching and found that what I wanted to do with my life was go to graduate school to become a therapist (never you mind that the location didn't exactly pan out the way I'd hoped). Turns out that decision was the right one and one which I haven't questioned or second guess once. Hm, I wonder if there is something to this follow your heart business.
I'll keep you posted.
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