When I sit down with my flat mates to decide what we are
having for dinner (Oh, who am I kidding?
When we sit down to decide which takeaway we are going to order) there
is an inevitable moment where I have to make a decision about the type of food
we are getting or what I want to have.
In most normal, rational people, this would not create any sort of major
existential crisis; I am not most normal people. Unless I know exactly what I fancy on that
evening, I usually have the exact same thing as I had the time before, just so
I don’t have to make a conscious decision.
Mostly, it’s because I’m a bit of a pig and everything on the menu
sounds really nice. The ensuing crisis
about choosing the wrong thing or if I would have preferred something else is
not a normal thing to do, so I stick with a decision I made years before and
have the same thing again.
The same applies when I am deciding what to buy in a
supermarket. I end up eating the same
meal time and time again because I am so terrible at making choices and the
neurosis that accompanies any decision I make.
What if I don’t fancy what I’ve decided to buy tonight for my dinner
tomorrow? It’s an impossible deadlock to
release yourself from, yet I keep on putting myself in to it.
My diverse taste in films and music are yet more pitfalls
for coming to a decision. I have (by a
lot of people’s standards) a large DVD collection. Unless a thought occurs to me about what I
want to watch, it can take me anywhere from 5 minutes to, on one shameful
occasion, an hour to decide what to stick on.
If we venture into the horrible land of Netflix and the ridiculous
amount of choices that has to offer, you can see how this could take a
while. When I lived with a girl just
after I left university, to avoid this paralysis –like me, she was an invalid
when it came to making any manner of decision – we ended up making a list of
things we both wanted to watch and worked through them in the pre-set order we
had agreed on so that no decision had to be made, unless one of us had a
burning desire to watch something in particular. Music, I have a similar paralysis, hence the
amazing use of Spotify, the playlist function it offers and my instantaneous stabbing
at the “shuffle play” on screen. I know
instantly if I don’t want to listen to that song, so can skip to the next.
I do the same when deciding what book to read. As a certified bibliophile, I have a grand
array of books I haven’t got round to reading yet. The issue doesn’t come in the shop of choosing
what to buy – that is never a problem I’ve had.
However, when you see them lined up in a row (Ok then, two rows… with
some stacked on top) of choices to be made, I find it impossible. Reading is more time consuming than people
give it credit, and if you get to the end of a book to discover the ending
sucked, you have just wasted the last however-many-days you’ve spend reading
it. It can be immensely disappointing. It’s a big decision. At least for me it is.
My name is Michael and I am a 27 year old male who has
decision paralysis. “Hi Michael!” No, this isn’t an Indecision Anonymous
meeting but it might as well be. It’s an
aspect of my personality I am far from fond of.
Guys in movies who dither about inevitably end up losing the guy or girl
of their dreams; their ideal job sneaks away from them; their arch enemy gets
away with the murder. It doesn’t tend to
end well for guys like me.
At work all day long, I am forced to make decisions – who goes
where, when they go there, what to do, who to speak to, how quick something
needs to be done. Unfortunately, all the
decision paralysis scenarios I posed above do not make a tremendous amount of
difference to anyone except myself; when it comes to the work I do, it has a
huge impact, either negative or positive, on my colleagues or the
customer. It isn’t a very good position
to be in sometimes.
The key element here is choice. Sometimes having choices is nowhere near as
good a thing as people would like us to believe. Sometimes selecting a default action is not a
cowardly choice; it’s a necessary one.
When people are pushing on you for a decision for their work or for
ordering their dinner, my inability to make my mind up has a knock on effect on
them.
It isn’t all bad though! Being forced to make any sort of
decision in a stressful situation can be a mixed blessing. No, you don’t have time to way up the pros
and cons but the spontaneity can have fantastic repercussions and, should the
situation arise again, you have a new path to take. But having the balls to make that decision is
not an easy thing to do for a neurotic like me.
I came to the conclusion many years ago that I am not a man intended for
management roles at work purely for this reason. Staff members look to their manager for
decisions to be made and directions to be set and courses of action to be
applied. I know what I’m doing well
enough, but when it comes to telling someone else “This is what you ought to be
doing”, I rarely feel competent to do that.
I have a trusting nature and often trust that people older than me know
better about most situations and I look to their experience rather than my own
inner compass. This is not always the
best way to operate.
When it comes to the bigger decisions in my life, I find it
very hard to do. Be it a career choice
or financial or property, the last thing I want to do is have the decision made
for me, but it doesn’t mean I want to make it in a vacuum. Plenty of people are fine with that and god
love them for it. I just don’t operate
that way. I trust that the people who
love me and know me best will have a very good take on scenarios I put to them
and will give me an insight… Hopefully before I go blundering into something
daft and have to come crying to them to help me fix it.
As I get older, I don’t have the stamina for making as many
mistakes as I used to. I suppose it’s
seeing the long term impact that can roll on for years. Some bad decisions in my 20’s about how to
spend my money are going to have a knock on effect for me until I’m almost
30. 10 years of digging through a bad
decision. It’s sort of like deciding to
commit murder and serving the associated prison sentence… only the view is
better and I don’t have to panic about dropping the soap.
One of my favourite movies is Bound- a not very-well-known little film about two lesbians who
decide to take down the mob. When Jennifer
Tilly’s character turns to her lesbian lover, Gina Gershon and tells her “We
make our own choices, we pay our own prices” she’s talking about her loveless
marriage. Those are the sort of
decisions and choices I don’t want to spend the rest of my life paying
for.
I’m currently trying to decide certain things in my life I
don’t want to debate on a public blog.
The comfort of checking in my two people I love the most in the world
for their honest opinion and not only getting it, but their accompanying
support was so uplifting to me. When I’ve
decided to do things in the past, many people are so quick to point out the
negatives from their own perspective and not take the time to consider my
perspective, my motivations and to say if they thing it will be a good move for
me or not. When you’re giving feedback
on anything – decisions, art, writing or work – it’s an important thing never
to leave the person feeling demotivated by what you’ve said. No matter what decisions I make in the coming
months, the support that has been given to me by my loved ones this week has
proved invaluable. More than anything
else, it has reminded me I am not alone in anything I do and there will always
be people there to love and care for me, if it goes well… or if it all goes
pear shaped and I end having to start all over again.
 |
| Hamlet, making a decision surrounded by "action choices" - borrowed from https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvWFGryzZj0LlKlXi2ZX6ci_UjO_9kFC7YxyfkE1Rd9ubhddIp2AjBgUe6UHBd-3JnJ0_pxFt91zJh9qJGGHivbHb8B2ARASTLG-CFExbTDaKyMO7GMZcsSacN0MK1Bs6gl1nINcqjAMM/s1600/Picture+1.png |
