Playing Mental Chess

Making decisions can be tedious. Decision making becomes tedious when you take in consideration all the angles i.e. how is this going to play out in the future, does making this decision contribute to my goals. Probably the decision that I have thought out the most that has been asked of me ever since I was a child is, “what do you want to do when you grow up.” Maybe it was my upbringing, but nearly every grown up in my life asked me that as a child. Simply being asked the question changed my frame of mind. Suppose I was never asked this question, it would not have seemed as important to make a decision. Since it was made to seem an important decision and one that I should think about, I thought it was important to get it right. Due to the fear of picking the ‘wrong’ choice I was indefinitely unwilling to commit to anything. In essence, I was attempting to make the most rational decision possible. The problem was that the things I wanted to do were often very irrational, unstable, and difficult to obtain. Such as being a movie producer, being a screen writer, becoming an aviator, or being an Olympic athlete.

When I went away to college for the first time I finally decided that trying to make these decisions rationally inhibited my willingness to take chances that could pay off if everything went as planned. So, my decision making has become less and less based on purely rational thought and increasingly based on motive and desire. If I am tackling a difficult decision I will first decide what my motive is for making the decision. I find looking into motive is eye-opening. It allows me to see alternatives that I may not have previously thought about. Once the motive is clear, decisions are much easier for me to make. Another factor I incorporate into decision making is attitude. Once a decision is made it can mentally be sabotaged by a bad attitude. Even if you may not have picked the best decision having a better attitude will help to some extent. In any case these little tricks I like to use are much less time consuming than playing out mental chess with each decision