I have this nasty habit of obsessing over decisions I make that are pending a final result. During the "pending" phase I'm always convinced that I made the wrong call, and that the result will be completely disastrous, and that I'll be left with a lot of clean up (or eating crow, or admitting I was wrong, or... well, you get the picture).
In the end things almost always work out fine. In fact, I can't think of one time when something I've obsessed about has actually been disastrous. Slightly askew, sure. Not 100% resolved, absolutely. But disastrous? Never.
I can already tell that tonight is going to be one of those obsessing nights.
SIGH.
I wish I had something funny to say to end this post. Oh wait, here's a joke: What do you call a cow that won't give milk? A milkdud!
I do this too. It's terrible. I read an interesting article in Psychology Today about this. The gist of it was that way back in the day, decisions were much more important and had greater impact on our survival, but much more clear cut. Should Og sleep in cave, or sleep out in field? Should Og eat berry or try to go hunt? We cling to the idea that these decisions are important and have profound impact on our lives, and so we agonize over many things as if they were life and death decisions. Should I buy Crest or Colgate? Whitening or Tartar Control? But the truth is, in this day and age, most decisions have very minor impacts on our lives. One of the studies the article referred to said that people who limit their choices tended to be happier--they simply didn't worry or agonize over the multitude of decisions.
ReplyDeleteAnother interesting article in Discover Magazine created a scale of decision maker-types, the "maximizers" and the ... well, I forget what the other end was called. The maximizers were concerned about getting the most out of life, so they spend a long time on every decision, and often second guessed themselves. These tended to be control freaks and the like. The other group were more happy go lucky--they made their decision and just went with it.
Anyway, just little information for you to chew on. I thought it was interesting, though I guess it doesn't necessarily help me from changing my ways.