We are faced with decisions all the time. But even when choosing is not easy, choices must be made. This video will help you make choices.
Video by BetterThanYesterday
Key Takeaways
There was this donkey that was wandering around, while it was thirsty and starving. The donkey hadn’t eaten anything in days, it hadn’t drank anything in days, and it was about to die. But luckily it found a bucket of water and a bale of hay.
Both were equal the distance from the donkey. But the donkey was paralyzed. It wanted to drink the water and it wanted to eat the hay, but it couldn’t decide which one to go for first.
Now if one was a little closer than the other, then that might have made its decision a little easier. But they were both equally far away.
So the donkey was turning its head. It looked at water, then back at hay, back to water and again at hay. Left and right, left and right. But the donkey was unable to make a decision.
And because it failed to make one, the donkey collapsed and died of dehydration and starvation.
The donkey didn’t realize that it could go drink the water, then go eat the hay and then go back to water and back to hay again, if it wanted to. Instead the donkey was analyzing which choice would have been better, until it died.
In many ways, we are like that donkey.
We are faced with decisions all the time. But even when choosing is not easy, choices must be made.
Here are some examples of difficult decisions you might face in life:
- Choosing a college major.
- Who you want to date.
- Deciding on a career path.
- Figuring out where to live. etc.
But none of these decisions have to be permanent. We can always change our mind and switch.
Let’s say someone wants to make extra money on the side. There are many paths they could choose.
- Beside working at their jobs, they could start trading stocks.
- Maybe invest in real estate.
- Or maybe they could open up their very own online store.
- All the choices may seem equally compelling. So they go: Stocks, real estate, online store. Stocks, real estate, online store. Over and over, just like the donkey. They can’t decide.
Instead of picking one thing, they tend to overanalyze every single decision, but in the end they don’t end up making a decision at all, because they’re afraid it’s going to be the wrong one.
But the truth is, we can’t really know which choice will be better, until we tried out one of them.
So don’t be afraid of making the wrong choice. You can always change your mind and go in a different direction if you see fit. The worst thing that could happen is that you learn something new about yourself and what you prefer.
Wrong choices, are just learning opportunities. You can always re-adjust your course if you find out that the direction you’re heading in, isn’t for you.
- For example; Let’s say you pick stock investing as a way to earn extra income. If after 1 year you realize that stock investing isn’t your thing, you can always switch to real estate or something else.
- But if you don’t try it first, then you’ll probably never find out that you dislike investing.
So whenever we are presented by equally compelling choices and we’re unable to decide which one to pick, the best decision is to just pick one, and go along with it.
In the end you might find out that something, which didn’t look that appealing in the beginning, is actually the direction you want to go in.
Indecision isn’t the only problem, however. Many people are so afraid of committing to one thing, that they decide to pick everything instead.
Imagine working on 5 different business opportunities at once. You don’t make any progress in any of them, because you’re scattered in way too many directions.
This quote summarizes it pretty well:
"If you try to chase two rabbits, you will not catch either one. You can't chase two rabbits, and expect to catch both of them. You need to make a decision and choose which rabbit you want to go after first. Only when you have caught the first one, can you go for the second one."
If you’re 20 or 30 years old today, then that means you have about 50 more years to do whatever you want with your life. So don’t worry about doing everything right away.
You have more than enough time to experiment and do all these different things you want to do today. But you have to focus on them one at a time, not at the same time.
We will almost never have all the information we need to make the perfect decision. However we must do our best to find out what we can, and then just pick one thing. Commit to that one thing for a longer period of time.
1 year for example. If it’s a career choice, try to get really good at it, or try to master it. You want to know the ins and outs of it at the end.
If you find out that the choice you made is not for you, good! You now know what you don’t want and in which direction you don’t want to go. After that you can always switch to something else.
Don’t make the mistake thinking that all the decisions are permanent. If you find that the next choice also isn’t for you, you can again, pick something else. There are no wrong choices. Just learning opportunities.
So don’t be donkey. Make a decision.