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Decision-Making: Right Mind, Right Questions, Right People
By Monte Wilson

Part 3: Right People

People from different (macro and micro) cultures, because we all too often confuse ethics (what is right and wrong) with cultural preferences, and because such people have an entirely different take on life, love, work, success and happiness than we do

People with no stake in our decision, and thus having no agenda (Friends often enter into unspoken conspiracies where we refrain from saying what would upset their world, if they will do the same for us. Friends “know best” what will make us happy, by which they mean, what will make them happy. We choose our friends because in many ways they are a lot like us … which means that potentially they have the same blind spots, hang-ups, and proclivities we do and, therefore, won’t ask the most challenging questions)

People that have made such decisions in similar situations in the past and long after having made their decision are content with the results. Then go to someone who made the opposite decision and are also satisfied with the results

People whose lives are going to be directly affected by our decisions

My dad taught me that, before I come to conclusions about certain beliefs and such, I should go read or talk to those people who take an entirely different position, and know what they are talking about. He constantly was telling me to go find the experts, the authorities on the matter and listen to them. “If you can’t answer their most challenging questions and assertions, if you have as yet no argument that legitimately answers or counters theirs, you are probably not ready to come to a conclusion.” This goes for decision-making in general.

Don’t stick with The Herd, shying away from speaking with anyone whom you know is going to give you a run for your money in taking a contrary position to the one you are considering: actually, this is exactly who you want to talk to. Do you want to avoid buyer’s remorse? Do you want to increase the level of confidence you have regarding your final decision? Then go talk with those people whom, when you think about speaking with them regarding this decision, you hear yourself saying, “No way am I going to talk with him/her/them about this!”

Of course, at some point you need to actually make a decision. While there is far more to wise decision-making than most of us realize, we can also hide from decisions by choosing to be “stuck” in the process, sometime euphemistically referred to as “Waiting on God” or “allowing the universe to show me what to do.” Riiiiiiight

Do you want to make the wisest and most well-informed decision possible, decisions that open the greatest amount of possibilities for success and happiness? Or do you just wanna do what you’re gonna do, because you are scared of what might happen if you don’t, because you fear what others will think or feel about you, because you prefer the small risk-free world you live in to the larger world that is made possible by rolling the dice on all those suppressed dreams and desires?

Life is too wonderful to squander in fear, guilt, double-mindedness, and indecision. Life is a gift to cherish, something to embrace, not to run from; something to face full on with the respect and honor for the gift it is, not to shy away from until, at the last of your days, you are drowning in the regret of would-have, could-have, should-have.

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2008