Be Selfish To Make Better Decisions

Your life is defined by your decisions. Everyday you wake up and you make decisions. That is all life is – continuous decision making process which creates the person that you are today.

Most of the decisions are fairly simple. Every morning when you wake up, you decide what you are going to wear, what you are going to eat and what you are going to do during your day. You probably will never think about many of them twice unless you somehow managed to make a destructive decision too many times, until it developed into a destructive habit.

However, some decisions are perceived as being extremely tough.

What exactly makes a certain decision a tough one? For example, they might have a huge impact on your finances, your relationships, your career, your health, your rest and so on. A tough decision usually comes sprinkled with fear and uncertainty.You will always want to know how things turn out in the end. And you are always going to be looking for the happy ending, right? At least, I do.

Matter of fact, you are probably going to be looking for a happy ending not only for yourself, but for those around you as well. You want your decision to have a positive impact on the people you care about. So far so good? Not exactly.

Many times your concern of how your action is going to affect others is exactly what prevents you from taking the action? Am I right? Think back to some of the following scenarios: you want to quit your job, you want to end a relationship, you want to change your major, you want to confess in something you did wrong, you want to stand up for what you believe in and so on.

How many of those times did you prevent yourself from making a decision because you were thinking the following: “I can’t do that. I don’t want to disappoint this person, I don’t want to hurt them, I don’ want to break their heart” The variations are countless.

Well, I have news for you. Ideally, you should eliminate other people out of the equation when making tough life decisions.

I am making the assumption that you are a decent human being and that you are not taking a decision to purposefully hurt somebody physically, emotionally or otherwise. I am referring to situations where you are following your path in life, where you stand up for your beliefs and your values.

When you are in a tough spot, there are many variables to consider. Sometimes the answers is not clear. The best thing to do then is to eliminate as many irrelevant variables as possible. I am making an argument that other individuals in your life are one of those irrelevant variables.

Many people in life feel like they are responsible for other people’s feelings when making a decision.

I disagree.

You are not one simple bit responsible for how others feel or react to the decisions that you make in life. 9 times out of 10, others will use that knowledge to manipulate you into making a decision that favors them instead of you.

People will react the way they do. There is nothing personal in that. They are just reacting to a situation.

Furthermore, if you assume responsibility for how others feel then you will be doomed to suffer until you choose otherwise. Ultimately, you are tying your own well being to somebody else emotions. You are giving away your power to others by doing that.

Think about it this way. If other people truly cared for you, then they would just let you be and be considerate of what you are doing. Instead, if they are reacting in a manipulative way (crying, being upset, sad, needy, angry, etc) chances are they are not even thinking about what is best for you, but only looking out for their own best interest.

For the sake of illustration let us examine a common situation which I experienced over and over again in college.

I always signed up for classes early in the morning so I could get my day started early. However, my roommates did not have classes until later in the day. Given that fact, they would go out and come back really late: 2AM or 3AM in the morning.

The problem wasn’t that they were going out; it was that I could not rest properly because of loud noise at 4AM. For a long time I tolerated it, thinking: “It’s okay, they want to go out; they have a right to do so. After all they are paying rent too!” However, after a while I realized that I was not getting proper rest and was tired all of the time. Things just didn’t fit. Eventually, I realized that I was not the problem and that my roommates were simply being disrespectful of my rest and just had their best interests in mind.

I eventually started confronting them to the point where it became a serious problem and I ended up moving out.

Even though, the above situation is not as serious it still send the same message: if you want to empower yourself, eliminate other people out of the equation when making tough decisions in life.

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Image: nerovivo