Unimportant Decisions Can Ruin Your Life

All of us are faced with both small and large decisions from time to time. The big ones decisions are things like: who to marry, whether or not to have kids, where to live, what job to have etc. These are decisions that we know will have a substantive impact on our lives. And because of that, most of us are thoughtful and deliberate when we make those big decisions.

But what about small decisions? Often we don’t think too much about those, but what if they actually play a large role too?

Small decisions are generally related to our day-to-day choices like: where to go for lunch, whether or not to return someone’s call, which route to take to work, whether or not to do a load of laundry etc. The majority of the myriad decisions we make every day would be classified as small.

But size isn’t everything. And just because a decision is small doesn’t mean it’s unimportant. In fact, the small decisions are vital because small decisions influence how we make big decisions.

Think about it this way, if we’re ineffective when making small decisions, will we actually be able to be effective when making the large ones?

I’ve heard the phrase, “how you do one thing is how you do everything.” The idea behind that saying is that we are who we are. Our character, our traits, our aptitudes are things that are unique to us. And as a result, they way we do small tasks mirrors how we do large tasks. So if we’re organized and diligent when running a lemonade stand we’ll be the same way if running a food truck.

Sometimes we like to imagine that even if we do small things poorly, we’ll transform into someone who is capable of doing much bigger tasks well. This is false. If someone is irresponsible with $200, they would be irresponsible with $2 million. Scale doesn’t change aptitude or personality traits.

So how does this relate to decision making?

It is vital that when we make decisions (large and small), we learn how to make choices that are true to our actual needs and wants. Many of us have been trained to believe that our day-to-day decisions are irrelevant and mundane, and because of that many of us are quick to compromise, and go along with things that we really don’t want or agree with.

But compromise is enemy of happiness and it becomes a habit that is hard to shake. When we’re used to making small choices in a flippant or haphazard manner, that will translate into how we make the bigger choices as well. This is why we see so many people even making the big decisions poorly.

People knowingly marry people they know they’re not compatible with, people choose jobs that they know they don’t like (and stay there for years or even decades), people move to cities they don’t like…why? Because we’ve been trained to accept compromise. We do it because we secretly believe we don’t deserve to live the lives we actually want.

But there is another way, a better way. We can live without compromising who we are.

Check out my book, Compromise is Killing You.