Decisions people agonise over the most often turn out to be precisely the ones that ought to be trivial when you consider things from a purely logical point of view.
Here’s why.
When one decision is clearly better than another then you don’t have to think about it. It’s easy and obvious to take the ‘correct’ option.
Where things seem to get tricky is if there’s little to choose between two options. That’s when you feel there’s a hard decision to make.
And, in a sense, that’s true. It’s genuinely difficult to sort out which is the ‘best’ option.
But here’s the kicker…
It doesn’t matter!
When there’s very little difference in the outcomes you get then you can be equally happy with either choice. Frankly, you might as well toss a coin for all the difference it makes.
If ‘A’ is the better option but you choose ‘B’ then who cares? The impacts you expect each one to have on your future are so similar that any lost benefits from choosing the ‘worse’ option are negligible.
It makes no sense to sacrifice time and effort analysing the small differences between them. Let alone the potential stress from worrying whether you’ve considered everything correctly.
So whenever a decision seems hard, ask yourself why. If it’s because you’ve thought through the upsides and downsides of various different options and there’s nothing to choose between them… Then you can relax.
Just pick one and move on.
This realisation can be very freeing. And I hope that’s the case for you. But if you think a bit further, you’ll notice there’s a potential ‘shadow side’…
If the decisions you thought were hard are actually easy, then what are the real hard decisions? (Because I don’t believe anyone would look at life and claim that hard choices simply don’t exist…)
My view is that the tough choices come when there are available options that do lead to significantly different outcomes… And you know it… But you avoid even considering the decision.
There could be many reasons for this. But the big one I see is that — although the future would look a lot brighter if you took action — it’s easier and more comfortable to stay right where you are.
Or it’s scary and uncertain to go out on a limb. Even though the likely benefits are massive.
So the real hard decisions aren’t hard because you’re not sure of the perfect answer. They’re hard because you already know the right choice… But you don’t want to do what’s ‘right’.