Decisions and the Fear of Consequences

Decisions are as much a part of life as breathing. We make them daily, in great numbers. Most of them we make without thinking. Getting up. Getting dressed. We consider what to wear, but rarely whether to get dressed at all. And so it goes throughout the day, until we decide in the evening to go to sleep.

Most decisions have no significant bearing on our lives — it does not really matter which way we go. Whether we have a salad, a burger or sushi for lunch affects at most our mood and how full we feel, not the quality of our relationships.

Some decisions are bigger than others. Where to go on holiday, whether to buy a new car, whether to start a course of study. Some decisions come easily; others nearly bring us to despair. Many can be undone or corrected — an impulsive online purchase, a rushed date, the wrong television channel. Only very few decisions are truly irreversible. The decision to have children. Or to end our lives.

Although we are all natural decision-makers, we often avoid the ones that really matter.

When it comes to the big questions, we prefer to hand responsibility to someone else.

Career. Did you consciously choose your current profession, or did it "just kind of happen"?

Partner. Did you consciously choose your partner, or did they "just kind of cross your path"?

Where you live. Did you consciously choose your home and surroundings, or did you "just not find anything else"?

Health. Did you consciously decide to take this medication for your condition, or did "the doctor just prescribe it"?

Finances. Did you consciously choose your current financial situation, or does it "just not work any other way"?

Where does this reluctance around truly important decisions come from? Why do we so often leave things as they are rather than changing them, even when the status quo has grown stale and is keeping our quality of life lower than it could be? One reason is surely this:

We often do not notice that our situation is gradually getting worse.

Many situations in life are like a room with the windows closed: we enter, begin working, spend hours inside, and barely notice that the air is becoming staler. Only when we leave the room, or when someone comes in and opens a window, do we become aware of the low oxygen level we have been living with. In life it is often illness or crisis that sharpens our awareness and forces us to face a decision.

Another reason we avoid important decisions is fear of the consequences. With the truly big questions, we cannot know how the decision we make today will affect our lives in the medium or long term. We do not know whether we will be at peace with a difficult choice in ten years, or whether we will suffer because of it. We do not know whether we will still find satisfaction in the career we train for today. We do not know whether we will still want to share our lives with the person we marry. We do not know how the shares will perform in which we invest half our savings.

Fear of unforeseeable consequences prevents us from making important decisions.

This fear is entirely human. But it does not have to stay. It can be dissolved. The more thoroughly we engage with the question at hand, the more grounded our decision becomes — and the less afraid we are of what might follow. This engagement involves both the concrete facts of the situation and our own personal needs. The better we know ourselves and what we genuinely need, the sounder our decisions will be — and the better we will be able to handle whatever consequences we did not foresee. One insight matters here: we can only ever decide from where we stand right now. This always carries the risk that, looking back, we might choose differently. But the more carefully we have worked through the question before deciding, the smaller that risk becomes. And even if ten years later we would decide differently — because things developed in ways we never expected or hoped — we have still gained something: new experience and growth.

Making important decisions is always a yes to growth and development.

Regardless of how we judge the outcome in hindsight.