DECISIONS, DECISIONS, DECISIONS!

     There’s my two-year-old granddaughter, standing stark still, nervously rubbing her hands together. Her usually smiling face a total blank. We had just plopped her in the middle of a plethora of games, objects and colors spread out on the second floor of the Children’s Museum.  My little girl is frozen! I wanted to rush in and save her from her stimuli overload, but sat, uncomfortably, on my grandma instincts. Better to allow her the experience of figuring it out for herself.  Sure enough, she snapped out of her daze and jumped on the book-eating dragon that was directly in front of her.  She never had to make a choice before and her little brain was flummoxed.

      Sadly, we don’t get much better at making decisions as we mature. In fact, not only are our neural circuits vibrating as anxiously as they did in childhood, but now our frontal lobes, basically our command center, pile on with lots of terrifying cognitive distortions. If I make the wrong choice, it will be: a) catastrophic, b) a bad decision I have to live with the rest of my life, c) apparent to everyone I’m a total idiot, or e) all of the above.

   OK, most of the time, we’re not making life or death decisions…whether to attack the saber tooth tiger drooling in front of us or run like hell. However, we often respond as if our lives are at risk if we, heaven forbid, buy the wrong lipstick color or have that extra piece of pie.  Agreed, I’m being snarky here.

      We are faced with a hundred decisions each day, few of them are of any long-term consequence. So why do we make it so perilous?

     What If I make a mistake? Chose the wrong girl? College? Car? Find out I have an awful diagnosis? Etc. etc. etc. Regret, self-loathing, and panic are just a few of the miserable feelings that people attempt to circumvent by procrastination, paralysis, and perfectionism. All, literally, accomplish nothing except helping you evade, for the time being, the pain of The Wrong Decision and the relief of “not knowing.”

     So, let’s stop at the Cognitive Distortion Store.

Big one! All or Nothing thinking: It is either the right or the wrong choice, nothing in the middle (really?). Reframe: There is no “right” or “wrong” choice.    Every decision opens up unexplored possibilities.  “Darn! I got closed out of Introduction to Psychology! I need that class! But, wait, I can finally take that Introduction to Anthropology I heard such good things about.”  

Fortune Telling: “I know how this will work out.” Really? Can I borrow your crystal ball when it’s out of the cleaners? “People will think I’m stupid.” Really? Everyone is totally focused on your decision? Their lives will be hopelessly impacted by it? You’re truly that negatively powerful? Don’t think so.

Catastrophizing: “It will be horrible, awful, terrible if I make the wrong decision. My life will be over!”  That’s a bit dramatic. And, let’s review the duality of the right/wrong decisions. Whatever decision you make can take you someplace interesting, up to you what you choose to learn from it or how you take advantage of it…once you stopped panicking. As far as finding out “bad news,” the probability of anything being terrible is incredibly low and if you find you do need to take action, you’ll discover you’re perfectly capable of taking care of yourself.

Buyer’s Remorse: “I made a mistake! I picked the wrong: girl, car, haircut, college, etc.”  A fact to keep in mind!  When asked what they regret the most about their lives, very old people often report it’s the opportunities they decided not to take that haunts them.  You don’t want to have regret being the only way you remember your life.

            Once you actually make a decision, you might feel:

Relief: “I’ve actually made the silly decision. It’s off my shoulders and the world didn’t collapse!”

Hope: “I’m curious what will happen now that I’ve made a choice. I’ve freed myself to move forward” (Go buy that car! Ask that young man to marry you! Apply for your MBA!).

Grief:  Whatever choice you made, there will be options that are left behind.  Even giving up addictions leads to grief. I still miss the calm I felt smoking cigarettes! And it’s been over thirty years! Or …the college you didn’t choose, the boy you didn’t marry, the trip you didn’t take. All could have been possible choices, possible experiences, possible growth that you will never know.

     Of course, age often allows for do-overs. Choices can now be based on life experience and expanded self-knowledge. Re-marriage after divorce or widowhood, second careers, new homes in new areas, better friends are all now possibilities.

     Now I watch my teenage granddaughter make multitudes of decisions a day. Still, possibly fraught with stimuli overload…have you ever been in Sephora? But no longer ringing her hands in fear, just reaching for her credit card.