We make decisions all day long. We decide what to wear, decide what to eat, decide when or how to go to work (or maybe not to go to work), the list goes on. Decisions (or making a choice, I will switch often between the two) are an every day part of life.

I believed that making the right decision was the most important. Obviously, making the wrong choice is not what anyone wants to do and would be the worst case scenario. We should always expect to make the right decision. We should plan as much as possible to make sure it’s the correct path. If the outcome is wrong, then our decision was wrong. So we should focus on always making the right decision, right?

This is the wrong thing to focus on.

I believe that over time, people who focus too much on making the right decision versus making a decision lose confidence in themselves. With making the right decision, the focus and judgement comes from the outcome.

However, we at some point all succumb to a decision (right or wrong) leading to a poor outcome. And those who focus only on the final outcome will suffer for feeling like they made a poor decision, even if the decision was correct! We planned for everything, we tell ourselves. How can this have gone wrong, we ask ourselves.

I welcome lady luck to the stage.

Whether we like it or not, luck is a big part of the outcome of a decision. Our minds are not set up to be able to know and plan for every scenario that could occur in a decision. Our subconscious simplifies our understanding of the world to help us have a sense of prediction and control over our future.

So it’s unrealistic to expect ourselves to know everything that could possibly occur, especially the unknown unknowns. However, if an “unlucky” event derails our decision, we blame ourselves for making a poor choice, even if that choice was the correct path. If a decision leads to success, we give ourselves very little credit since it was obviously the correct decision.

For many of us, we forget our success cases and remember only the bad. After enough poor outcomes, we start to lose confidence in our decision making. This leads to a fear of making decisions and all of a sudden, each decision we do make has more weight. When inevitably, one of those decisions leads to a poor outcome, our fear and doubt in ourselves increases. This cycle feeds on itself and gets stronger.

What we must do, is to shift our focus to the decision making process, and not the outcome. This does three things:

1. We release ourselves from luck.
2. We gain a better sense of control.
3. We allow ourselves to make more decisions.

Our decision making process is something we can control. The outcome, because luck is involved, is out of our hands. And the more decisions we make, the more outcomes we have. The more outcomes we receive, the more we can learn and adjust our process.

And this means that the worst case scenario isn’t actually a bad outcome. The worst case is the act of not making a decision, because then it leads to not learning anything.

Whether right or wrong, there is power in making a decision. So go out, make decisions, and adapt.