Sooner or Later You Are Going to Have to Commit

We all ride the fence from time to time. Indecision causes inaction. We endlessly weigh the pros and cons of a decision, and the result is that no decision is made.

Should I marry this person?

Should I buy that alpaca farm?

Regular or crunchy raisin bran?

But frequently, not making a decision is worse than either of the options you are weighing. The decision gets taken out of your hands. A great opportunity passes while you flip back and forth. The store sells out of raisin bran.

At some point, you have to commit.

One method of deciding is by looking at the worst that can happen.

But that, in itself, can lead to indecision. If you focus on the downside of both options, that may delay even the simplest of choices.

When I met my future bride, we went through some of the habitation habits that many new couples do. I spent more and more time at her place but kept my apartment. Just in case. But that shows a lack of faith in your partner that can erode the relationship and become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

So one day, I had to go all in. I dumped the old place and moved the rest of my meager possessions into our first home.

And that went great. We were both happy, and I think our lives were made better by becoming a single unit. But single was the operative word, we didn’t get married, even though we were a couple in every other sense.

Then one day, we went all in. Hey, let’s get married. Okay. It was no big deal; we announced it to friends and family, went to the Justice of the Peace one Wednesday evening, and made it official.

Because sooner or later, you’re going to have to commit.

I guess my biggest lesson in fighting indecision and making a commitment came a few years before all that. I wrote about it here.

One Saturday afternoon, I found myself sitting in the open door of a Cessna 182 with a parachute strapped to my back. The jumpmaster pats me on the back and yells, “GO!”

It was probably only about three seconds, but it felt like I sat there for a long time, thinking about that decision. It had only been about eighteen hours since some friends, and I decided to do this. That decision was made. We had been busy all morning getting to the place and cramming in a few hours of ‘lessons.’

Lessons. On how to fall out of an airplane.

And as the four of us lined up at the door ready to board the plane, the jumpmaster asked who wanted to go first. My friends all took one step backward.

That decision was made.

So, I sat there and went through my what’s the worst that can happen routine. That one was pretty obvious. I had studied aerodynamics and physics with Wile E. Coyote. I knew what was the worst that can happen.

But sooner or later, I had to commit. You’ll have to read the other article to get to the end of that story, but spoiler alert: I lived.

As many of you know, I recently decided to take up the guitar. I thought about it for weeks, months even. I weighed the pros and cons. I researched types and models. I looked into lessons, both live and online.

But sooner or later, you have to commit. The time between me making that final decision and taking ownership of a guitar was about two hours.

Probably our most significant life decision since marriage was retirement. Now that one, we rode the fence on for years. We analyzed and agonized. Leaving that safety blanket of full-time employment we had endured for forty-five years was a tough decision, probably the toughest we ever made.

But I remember one day we were talking about it. I had run the numbers endlessly. I was getting pretty fed up with my job, and I could tell she felt the same. So after another day of thinking it through, I said to her, “I can promise you two things about retirement whether we do it now or five years from now. One, we will be okay. How do I know this? We are always okay. Two, no matter when we do it, we will wish we had done it sooner.

And within a few weeks, it was done.

Any time you are faced with a choice in life, thinking it through is always a good thing. But you can take it too far. Because you are not deciding between two options, but three. The third choice is not making a decision.

And that is rarely the best choice.

Not only do you not move forward with whatever the decision is, but the indecision also weighs on you. You may think you’ve put it out of your mind, but you never do. Should I or shouldn’t I is always looming in the back of your mind, distracting and aggravating you. According to AIESEC (formerly known as the Association Internationale des Étudiants en Sciences Économiques et Commerciales), you shouldn’t spend more than one hour on any decision.

And, in my experience, you almost always make the right decision in the end. I think there are several possible reasons for this. First, I think we are usually smarter than we think we are. Our brains are noodling over the choices, weighing pros and cons, and typically come up with the right answer.

Another reason, and I think this is true more often than not; we knew the right choice to begin with. Of course, it’s time to move in with her. Yes, we should have gotten married months ago. And the skydiving? Nice try, you have to read the other article.

But most of the time, we know the right answer, we just need to convince ourselves.

And finally, we humans are great at self-rationalization. Once we make a decision, we are pretty good at convincing ourselves it was the right one. And why not? You’ve made the decision; you may as well make the best of it.

EverydayPower says:

When the thought of staying in your current situation brings you more anxiety than the thought of removing yourself from that state, you know you’ve made the right decision.

So, if you are riding the fence over a decision, think it through with these points in mind. Make sure you aren’t just waffling because you already know the right answer. Go through the pros and cons quickly; you probably know what they all are.

But sooner, rather than later, commit.

Take a leap of faith.