BARRIERS TO MY DECISION MAKING PROCESS

BARRIERS TO MY DECISION MAKING PROCESS

At this point in my life, making a decision has become a very critical assignment. I can no longer make decisions like I used to some few years ago. I no longer rely totally on people’s opinion to make a decision; even though I do pick pieces of advice from various sources. The days when decisions where decisions were made for me by my parents or guardians are over.  There is still the possibility of consulting them once while when making a decision.

My life at this point is as a result of the decisions I have taken over years; those I personally took and those taken for me by my guardians, parents and relatives among others, at one point in time or the other.

I have come to realize that some things seriously war against my ability to make decisions every now and then. One of such warring factors is the fear of failure.

The fear of failure has become a major impediment to taking any decision in my life, even though it does not totally prevent me from taking decisions. It slows down the process. The fear of mockery and ridicule stares me in the face anytime I want to take a decision because of the fear that that decision may not turn out well. This has prevented me from taking certain steps which would have had very drastic impacts on my life and the people around me. These impacts I believe would have been both positive and negative. Since everything that has happened in my life over the past years have all not been positive or plausible implies I have made decisions which did not always turn out good or in my favor.

Another thing that proves itself to be a real obstacle to my decision making process is experience. Experiences that affect my decision making take two forms: Personal experiences and experiences of other people.

Because I made decisions in the past which did not turn out well or produced undesirable results, they have become reference points to similar decisions that I have to make presently in my life. For example, due to past failed relationships with the opposite sex, it has become somehow difficult for me to go out and approach a lady, let alone make any propositions.

Certain areas have been marked as “no go zones” due to past failures in those areas. Meanwhile with a little bit of careful considerations, I could venture into these areas again.

Most often when we want to take certain key decisions in our life (who to marry, when to marry, career path, which course to pursue in the tertiary, the kind of house to buy among others), we do our best to consult people we believe have some kind of experience in such areas and might have lived on earth longer than us. As a matter of fact, these people counsel us based on their personal experiences over the years without necessarily looking at our peculiar situation and leading us to the best fit choices or decisions for us.  

The decisions I have made along the way are sometimes based on other people’s experiences and the challenges they faced along that same way I am intending to take.

The third factor that often obstructs the smooth process of decision making process in my life is societal expectation. I believe no couple or man and woman seek societal consent in order to make love to procreate. However, once the child is born, society influences everything about that child from birth to death. Even the name given to the child is influenced by society and when the child begins to develop or grow, society expects him to conform to certain norms and abide by certain rules and regulations. He is also expected to live in a certain manner cut out by the society.

Whenever an opportunity to make a decision arises, one thing that pops up in my mind is; how society would react to the outcome of that decision. Sometimes you would prefer not to take any decision at all rather than take a decision that would be to the displeasure of society. I am often tempted to believe that we become what society expects and it looks like our lives are remote controlled by societal expectations.

At every point in man’s life, he must take a very critical look at his present circumstances. If he appreciates his present life that means the decisions he has made or taken in the past have turned out well or yielded good results. However, if the present life conditions are not the best or what he hoped for or undesirable, that means the decisions made over the past years did not turn out well. He must therefore do a significant assessment to ascertain what went wrong and at what point and make necessary changes to his decision making process. Decisions should be flexible so that alteration can easily be made to them when the need arises.

John Benjamin Eshun © 2012