How To Stop Worrying About Making The Wrong Decision

How To Stop Worrying About Making The Wrong Decision

Every day, you make decisions, take actions, and live with the consequences.

 

Some of your decisions lead to bad results, so you may sometimes spend hours or days worrying about important decisions you need to make.

 

In pursuit of answers, you may do research, ask for advice, and do some critical thinking about the situation. Even with this preparation, answers are not always clear.

 

You need to make a decision, but you don’t know if the outcome will be positive or negative. This can be stressful.

 

When you’re in this uncomfortable situation, consider the following:

 

You are most likely focused on the immediate material gains/losses that may occur when you make your decision. (money, property, time, reputation, friendships, etc.) This is stressful.

 

But there’s something you’re forgetting: the knowledge you gain simply by making the decision in the first place. Even if you make the wrong decision, you can still benefit from the knowledge learned.

 

This definite knowledge, remembered and applied for the rest of your life, has incredible value. Even if you lose something by making the wrong decision, you gain the majority of the loss (or more) back in the form of long-term applicable knowledge and experience.

 

Capturing The Knowledge

 

Use a simplified version of the scientific method:

 

  1. Write out exactly what you’re about to do.

  2. Write out the results you expect to happen.

 

After you’ve made the decision, taken action, and given time for the results to come in…

 

  1. Write down what actually happened on the same page.

 

You may lose money or time or something else but you’re guaranteed to gain something as well.

 

Thomas Edison tried 1,000 light bulb experiments before finding his final solution. Because he recorded his experiments and the 1,000 non-solutions he found, he got closer and closer to a design that worked. Imagine if he hadn’t written down the experiments he had done, trying to rely on just his memory.

 

You also made decisions and run mini-experiments every day. Sometimes you make big decisions with big consequences. The next time you do, try writing out this 1, 2, 3 simplified scientific method.

 

Even if you make the wrong decision, you’ll have decreased your susceptibility to future loss and decreased your future worrying should a similar situation arise again.