Weekly Book Review No. 16

Some time ago, in a conversation with a friend on the subject of making decisions, I realized that many of us find it difficult to make decisions that go a bit further than choosing your lunch.

I suspect it's a mixture of lethargy, fear of doing the wrong thing, not recognizing the consequences of the decision in the first place, and a general unwillingness to take responsibility for one's own decisions, one's own life. Whether decisions are easier or harder for you is certainly also predestined by character traits and whether you were able to practice this well and more often in your childhood, perhaps also from which cultural circle you come.  

Decisions are often difficult for me, I like to push them off to my environment. To counteract this, I have been actively practicing in the last few months, since the topic has become more present. A great first reading for this was the book above.

The author presents different types of decision-making situations and gives advice on how to make decisions. By looking into the topic, I notice many practical examples in everyday life of how others make decisions and also how many people seem to have a hard time with the topic.

I find "not being able to decide" agonizing, it creates misunderstandings in the environment because wrong signals are sent and even if we would ask everyone in our environment, they can't take the decision away from us. Because I still have to decide alone. And live with the consequences too, hmph.

But how can we find out what we want, because if we knew, the matter would already be decided? So decisions mark the point where we have to change something in the status quo, but don't know how yet. The fact that a decision is made is usually also a question of the level of suffering, isn't it?

The more tedious the postponement, the waiting, the proximity to the deadline, the foreseeability of the consequences of not making a decision, the easier it is for those of us who are unwilling to make a decision. Because I want this to change for you too, I recommend this book to you.

Let me know how your decision making process is going. I'd love to hear about your experiences and insights.

Do you like this book review or would you like to share a groundbreaking read with all Ally Vision readers? Email me at martina@ally.vision