Which way are you going to go, do you know? I certainly don’t. We can try to make an educated guess, but I do think that you can do better than that.
Life is full of decisions, and the reason people hire “experts” is to help them make those decisions. Trust is the currency of peace, because when you trust someone, you offload decisions to them.
And sure, some things are simple and can be solved with a simple calculation, or by hiring the right people.
But the most important decisions in life are much harder nuts to crack.
Life itself is a string of decisions, decisions mixed with emotion, relationships, biases, fears, memories, and a slew of other influences.
In a perfectly efficient world, we would all walk through life making rational, research-based decisions, but the world is anything but efficient. Our problems are gray and messy, and our solutions are never perfect fits.
(This is why I hold to a behavioral definition of finance. Money is never optimized and ideal when humans are involved. There are few clear-cut easy answers.)
It is because there are so many distractions and obstructions that decision-making is a hot topic in business literature.
Everyone wants to make good choices, and they want those choices to lead to their personal flourishing and success.
And they want to get there overnight.
And yes, decision-making is a skill, like driving, but it’s not something you can “get.” It’s something that “gets” you.
Because the ability to make the best decision isn’t based on your intelligence or number of books read, but on your ability to see clearly, get centered, and have a feeling for what is “best”, an intuition.
And you don’t earn that without years of experience, mistakes, and recoveries.
The best decisions aren’t based on some sort of curriculum or formula. I can’t tell you what to do based on what everyone else says is best.
We can use that as a baseline, but the best thing for you to do is known only to you.
Decision-making is based on wisdom: seeing the world as it really is and developing an intuition for how to navigate it best.
Like Mark Twain navigating the Mississippi, you learn the size and purpose of your boat, the location of rocks and shallows, and then you learn to watch and feel for any new complexity.
So when you are faced with another decision, open your eyes as wide as you can and take it all in, and then, when the time comes where you have to commit to a path, do it.
You’re not accountable for where that path ends, only for each step you take.
And every day brings a new step.
For today, take the next step, knowing that in the future you’ll know more and maybe wish you hadn’t taken that step. But that’s okay.
We do the best with what we have, right now, and trust that tomorrow will take care of itself.
“The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” ~Lao Tzu
“Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is God's gift, that's why we call it the present.” ~Joan Rivers