Someone has to make the hard decisions. Sometimes it’s you, other times it’s someone else, but God help us all if there is no one to make them!
Whether on the job, driving the roads, relationships, financial, and even personal, hard decisions are, well, face it, their hard! They should never be taken lightly.
Many times I’ve reached a crossroad and find I’m not prepared to make the decision. That makes the future even harder to live. It’s like pulling the plug on a job and saying it’s time to move on. The evidence is mounting that the time is better than ever, but the security, safety, and peace that comes from the status quo often keeps many of us in an unhappy place.
Hard decisions. Hard choices.
Have you ever been with someone who struggles to order from the menu? It’s not like this is their last meal and they have a long list of favorites to choose from! No! They could come back tomorrow and order something different. So, why struggle with the choice? And they always ask the waiter to come back to them after everyone else has ordered, and they still don’t know what they want. Come on! It’s just food!
I’ve been frustrated sitting behind someone at a stop sign trying to choose which way to go. There are three options. Left. Straight. Right. Choose one and get out of the way! Please! If the traffic is flowing against the way I need to go, I’ll simply go with the flow of the majority only to look for a better place to U-Turn, headed for the direction I need.
There’s logic to this.
Waiting at a stop sign for the traffic to thin so you can turn the way you need to go is arrogant and shows you care little about those behind you!
Going with the majority flow and looking for a better place to U-Turn means you are willing to inconvenience yourself and not others.
This is often a good thing and speaks volumes about your decision-making skills!
How do you make the right choice? Here’s the beauty of it – you can always choose to do something different after you’ve made the present choice! Divorce courts show us this reality all the time! Couples make a solemn commitment “…til death
Just ask anyone with a life sentence living in some prison.
There are many careers where you have to make split-second decisions and then live with the consequences. Think police officer. There are many careers where you have to make decisions that give you an opportunity to repair a problem before moving forward. I did this a lot as a programmer. Before you process data in a posting program, you often clean up the input data in advance so the processes will function without failure and the output will be the desired result. You know the saying, “Garbage in, Garbage out.” (GIGO) You filter the bad in early steps, allow for corrective actions, and then feed the data into proper processing channels.
ATM’s (Automatic Teller Machines) do this all the time and they generally work seamlessly because of good mechanics and programming.
The past few years has shown that we are rapidly moving into the realm of driverless cars. You know, the computer is in complete control and all decisions are made by sensors, algorithms, and split-second choices that choose the results based on certain programmed rules. Imagine the programmer’s dilemma planning for a scenario like this.
Imagine you are in such a car.
A child darts out in front of you.
Your only escape is continuing forward, braking, and hoping for the best,
or aim for the sidewalk.
Wait!
There are 100 kids waiting for the bus.
Do you hit the one, or the 100?
You’ve just entered the Twilight Zone.
Here’s my thought today. We learn how to make better decisions with each decision we make in life. At a young age, we should be taught decision-making processes, learning that decisions have consequences. This is the key.
Decisions are often made with emotions, and not logic, or vice versa.
There is and should be, a balance between emotions and logic when making important decisions in life and you learn the score by how you were taught to choose. And this choosing should happen long before the options create lifelong undesirable results.
Equally, most of the really hard decisions should not be made in the heat of the moment. I’m not talking about emotions, rather, I’m thinking about the press of the moment. There are a lot of things happening and we have to choose to do something, and the choice we make when there are a lot of balls being juggled…well, it’s not always best to make life-changing decisions when you do not have the time and energy to analyze all the options.
My personal choice for making hard decisions has been with me since high school. For over 45 years I’ve used a Pro/Con T-Account to help me weigh the options. It may not give me a solution, but it does help me clarify my position. I may be naturally bent to one side of the equation over the other, but listing the Pro’s and Con’s helps me understand the ramifications of the choices before me.
In the bible, Joshua is finally leading Israel into the Promised Land. He outlines their past and all the choices that were made that presents the final destination before them.
“Your fathers dwelt on the other side of the flood in the old time…” and your roots are deep, all the way back to Abraham. Your heritage has been long running. When things got bad, Moses stepped on the scene and brought God’s deliverance. We’ve been through the wilderness and all the challenges, and now before you is the Promised Land. “I have given you a land which you did not work for, and cities you have not built, and crops you did not plant,” says God. So… Make a choice. Serve God, or serve the gods you learned of when in captivity. … (Joshua 24)
Your choice? After rehearsing the history, considering the Pro’s and Con’s, is it really a hard decision?