As I imagine I have discussed elsewhere, life really can be defined as a series of choices that we make. These choices are what makes our lives uniquely ours, and make us, well, us.
The interesting things about choices, is that they are really a series of decisions we make. However, as humans, we don’t like to make decisions for ourselves. Personally, I found that there were two reasons that I was escaping making my own decisions in life. 1) I thought there were people “out there” more qualified than myself to make decisions for me. 2) I was scared to make my own decisions, lest I make the wrong decisions.
I started doing some research on decision making and found that in fact, most people probably feel the same way I used to feel. Check out what Wikipedia says about “some of the decision making techniques people use in everyday life
- Pros and Cons: Listing the advantages and disadvantages of each option, popularized by Plato and Benjamin Franklin
- Simple Prioritization: Choosing the alternative with the highest probability-weighted utility for each alternative (see Decision Analysis)
- Satisficing: using the first acceptable option found
- Acquiesce to a person in authority or an “expert”, just following orders
- Flipism: Flipping a coin, cutting a deck of playing cards, and other random or coincidence methods
- Prayer, tarot cards, astrology, augurs, revelation, or other forms of divination
- Taking the most opposite action compared to the advice of mistrusted authorities (parents, police officers, partners …)”
You will notice that only two of six methods actually involve our own thinking! Pretty crazy if you ask me. What that means is that we are outsourcing our decisions, and therefore our choices, and therefore our lives to others for whatever reason you will attribute this fact to.
Amazing, huh.
So take back your life. Make a cognizant effort to make your own decisions.