Choices — and the decisions we make — determine which roads we travel. Some of those decisions will be right, some wrong, and a few may require a U-turn and do-over. All of this is fine and normal. Little in life follows a straight, predictable path.
Because decision-making is an imprecise science, life is never as easy as New York Yankee legend Yogi Berra loves to make it. Now 87, 56 years ago today Berra caught the only perfect game in World Series history. Yankee pitcher Don Larsen retired 27 straight Brooklyn Dodgers to beat Sal Maglie — who had three Hall of Famers in his lineup — by a score of 2-0.
Berra had an extraordinary career as a player, coach, and manager. Later in life Yogi became even more famous as a master of malapropisms. Examples include: “It ain’t over ’til it’s over” and “Nobody goes there any more — it’s too crowded.”
But one of Berra’s favorite sayings is relevant to decision-making.
“When you come to a fork in the road,” he is fond of saying, “take it.”
Parents and guardians choose our forks during our formative years. Once we grow up and move out on our own, the decision-making process changes. We become accountable for deciding nearly everything. Since inexperience causes chaos, all of us can look back on those early years and wince at least a couple of times.
Life choices, like career choices, can loom quite large: stay in the current job, take a new one, move, quit, break up — each with a unique set of ramifications and consequences. Rewards, penalties, dreams realized, hopes destroyed. Progress, frustration, stress, achievement. Big decisions magnify everything. The bigger the decision, the more at stake, the more pressure we feel.
Decisions rise to reality one of three ways: by choice, necessity, or circumstance. Each type comes with its own set of considerations.
Decisions by choice
When the decision is ours to make, we weigh its upside, downside, watch-outs, and rewards. Since change is disruptive, the situation sometimes is to maintain the status quo.
Assuming we avoid “paralysis by analysis,” these are the easiest type of decisions to make. We make the call in order to pursue a positive reward, or we make a decision to avoid a negative consequence. If the pull of neither is strong enough to act upon, our third choice is to do nothing — which is, in fact, an action of its own.
Decisions of necessity
Because change is disruptive and inconvenient, sometimes we procrastinate until forced to make a move. Whenever change is thrust upon us this way, we react differently than if it were by free choice.
Our decision may involve something we are willing to do or it may involve something we do not want. Forced change, when perceived in a negative light, can be emotionally disruptive. Because of that people often push back and resist.
Proper mind management is the key to dealing with decisions fueled by necessity. Four tips are:
- If the time has come to make the call, make it. Do not put it off. Analyze your options and pull the trigger.
- Once made, do not waste time or energy second-guessing yourself. Focus on the future, not the past. If it was the right decision at the time, it will always be the right decision at the time.
- If the decision bugs you, that’s okay — for three days. After that, the irritant is banned from the mind.
- Never doubt yourself. Do not doubt your ability to adapt and thrive in a new environment. Once you commit, you will be fine.
Decisions caused by circumstance
Lives can change by accidental occurrence. My brother’s entire career started by luck: He was a bank loan officer, next up to meet a guy moving into town who came in to borrow some money. One thing led to another and soon my brother was the fellow’s right hand man, at an income of multiples what it had been before.
Another friend answered a ringing telephone. A man was starting a business and needed some good people; and he was calling because he had heard she was a good worker. They cut a deal over the telephone. She joined his business. Three decades later they still work together, both making much more than had been making before.
Although job-hopping has increased thanks to the two-pronged demands of an impatient Gen Y work group and the economic flux of an unstable economy, workers with career aspirations, especially those in two-income relationships, are often faced with a job-related decision whether or not to uproot their lives and move.
My father’s corporate career effectively dead-ended when he turned down a promotion because he did not want to move from Philadelphia to Little Rock. The reason was not the job — the reason was my sister, who was legally blind. In Little Rock she would have been put into a special school –a blind school — something my parents did not want to do. The world would cut my sister no slack and my parents wanted to raise her that way. They stayed put in Philadelphia and raised her to compete among peers with normal vision. She has flourished as an adult, thanks in no small part to dual Master’s degrees.
Things did not work out as well for my father. Once he left that company for another, he never regained his former status or income level. Given a do-over, my guess is would have handled everything identically the same. Some things are not worth trading for dollars and dimes.
The stickier the situation we find ourselves in because of forced situations, the more vital it is to know the answers to two vital questions:
- What is your best alternative?
- What is your worst?
You must know both. If things work out, great. But if the worst possible scenario happens, what will you do? How will you handle it? Think through these ahead of time, not after the hammer falls.
If at all possible, try to avoid being caught flatfooted. Know your best alternatives: Best as in good, and best as in best case concerning what you can do if things go wrong. If a worst-case scenario becomes a reality, reacting to one you’ve thought through is never as daunting as it is if you are blindsided and unprepared.
Making decisions is part of living. Work hard at making good ones.