One Lesson A Day Challenge #4 — Make A Decision and Own The Results

“Experience is a truer guide than the words of others.”

-Leonardo da Vinci

Sometimes I feel paralyzed when I have to make a decision. I feel like I have to consult other people and get every possible perspective and opinion until I can make a proper choice.

I’m afraid to “make the wrong decision”, but what does that really mean? I think it might just mean that I’m scared to call the shots and take responsibility for whatever happens. If I make a decision for myself and for others and it affects people in a negative way, then there is no one else to blame but me.

In a way, if I consult other people, I feel like I’ve done my due diligence and I think this allows me to push the responsibility of the decision I made to the people I’ve talked to and received opinions from.

I’m not saying it’s not good to ask for other people’s perspectives and see how they see the situation. Other people might be able to see things more objectively, since you’re going to be full of biases that you can’t help but have toward yourself. Other people might be able to persuade you to see the situation in a more positive light or from a different angle.

They are able to test your decision and make sure it holds up when pressure is applied. They can poke holes into your line of thinking and see if it can withstand some turbulence. They can offer solutions that you might never have considered.

But when it comes down to making a decision, is the choice that you make really what you believe or is it something that someone else told you was the right decision? It’s good to have different options that you can pick from and it’s good to be able to see from different perspectives, but overall the choice you make should be what you see fit at the time. You should be willing to pay the price for whatever happens next.

If the results are great, props to you — your confidence in yourself will rise and you will learn to trust your own judgment and reason when you have to make more decisions in the future.

If the results are bad, you take responsibility and own up to it. You tell yourself and to others that you used the information that you had to come up with what you thought was the best solution at the time, but it looked like it was not the best decision that you could have made.

But at least you could say that it was something that you believed would work and your only rationalization wouldn’t be “because someone else told me this was the right choice”.

To be honest, this wasn’t the most well thought out piece and was written in a hurried way. But I thought that writing something was better than not writing at all. I don’t like to use the excuse of fatigue or “it’s too late so I’ll do it tomorrow”. Once you take on that attitude and allow yourself to cave into excuses, you can use it in any other situation.

Focusing on quality is good and obviously important when writing for other people to read, but I think writing your thoughts freely has merit as well. I don’t want to sound like a robot and write with precision all the time (or maybe that is what is holding me back as a writer). I think I can be more creative when I don’t have to think without restraint. I don’t want my writing to feel calculated and I want it to have the vulnerability and honesty that it’s always had.

But I do recognize that maybe this is an excuse to not change my writing style and not attempt to refine my craft and edit my pieces. Finding the quote below kind of stung — maybe it’s the hard truth that I need to face about myself.

The painter who draws merely by practice and by eye, without any reason, is like a mirror which copies every thing placed in front of it without being conscious of their existence.

-Leonardo da Vinci

I guess this is the decision that I will make now, and if I don’t see results (whatever that may be, I guess I need to work on finding a clear goal to determine if I am successful in working on improving my writing) then I can take responsibility for my lack of foresight and laziness and I can adjust from there. For now, I am happy that I was able to overcome my thoughts of fatigue, sit down and do what was necessary. There is never a perfect moment to start and one shouldn’t wait for motivation to wash over them. One needs to take action to see what will come forth. One can never know what they might find if they are willing to try and do.