#1: It will improve your life outcomes and help you avoid pitfalls, especially if you’re young
This is THE primary reason. Making decisions is how we build our lives.
Where we live, where we work, who we befriend or marry, and how we spend our time are just a few factors that have really important consequences on our overall well-being and life satisfaction.
If you’re an adult, you probably recognize by now that there are several external pressures that shape our individual and collective decision-making. Your parents raised you a certain way, your religion and culture have specific designs for your life, your government has policies that majorly affect your way of life, just to name some of the biggest ones.
Sometimes, these teachings and regulations are in the interest of your well-being and the guidance is helpful. But many times, these institutions direct your attention and decisions in ways that benefit their larger goals regardless of the individual harm that imposes on you and others personally. These external forces can have extremely narrow and specific definitions of a “good life”.
Children don’t get much say in the environments they grow up in. So as adults, it becomes very easy to live life on auto-pilot and allow these forces to continue to structure our thoughts and therefore, our opinions and decisions, and then ultimately our lives. It’s too easy to suddenly look up and wonder… how exactly did I get here? And do I actually like wherever “here” is? Am I proud of what I have said and done to others in order to arrive?
As if all that weren’t complicated enough, our brain also naturally falls into faulty thinking in certain situations. The relatively new field of behavioral economics was born when economists realized that not only are humans not rational decision-makers, there are specific situations in which we predictably choose poorly due to innate emotional biases. We are emotional creatures. In the field of psychology, cognitive distortions are a widely researched phenomenon that describe irrational patterns of thinking that cause us to incorrectly and negatively interpret our environments. The growing field of trauma research is uncovering the hidden and powerful ways that negative life experiences— especially childhood experiences— disrupt our ability to make healthy decisions or react appropriately to situations as adults. Learning, understanding, and adapting around these natural and predictable human pitfalls in thinking will help us better steer clear of some of life’s most painful outcomes and recover better when we inevitably do slip up or run into bad luck.
No matter how smart or rational you believe that you already are, in order to become great thinkers and decision-makers, we must train. Our biologies, the systems shaping our lives, and the lingering effects of unaddressed traumas will lead us far from our goals if we allow them to.
Here is another not-so-fun fact many people realize the hard way: Time compounds the quality of our habits and decisions. That means habits we think are little and inconsequential pile up over time and develop this greater and greater pull in our lives. This can be good in the case of positive habits and dangerous in the case of more negative habits. I highly recommend the book “Atomic Habits” by James Clear to anyone who wants to learn more about the surprisingly powerful impact of small habits along a large time horizon. From health to relationships to skill building and personal finances, some of the most important aspects of life are built (or neglected) slowly over decades. So slowly, the negative changes are dangerously easy to ignore. The enjoyment or relief provided by these destructive habits are dangerously easy to indulge in. This is why decision-making is especially important in your earlier years. It’s just easier to course correct and recover if your habits haven’t been adopted and entrenched for decades.
But please, don’t let that worry you if you’re older. People who quit smoking by age 50 reduce their risk of dying in the next 15 years in half compared to people who don’t. And if a person quits before age 35, almost all health risks associated with smoking can be completely reversed. This is just one of many, many specific examples of how resilient the human body and mind are and the tendency to trend towards recovery if you find the motivation, readiness and strategy to CHOOSE differently.
Don’t stress if you’ve made some bad choices. Everyone has and must. That’s a human thing, it’s unavoidable. It’s also very human to surmount these challenges and write a beautiful next chapter, much wiser from the experience.
You can change your life at any time. There’s always time to improve your life outcomes. Until your final breath you can enjoy a better life.
And competent decision-making is how we can hope to do this.
Sources:
Atomic Habits, James Clear (Book).
University of Michigan Health, “Smoking: Heart Attack and Stroke Risks”
University of Pittsburgh Medical Center- “What Are Cognitive Distortions”
Pacific Standard- “HOW CHILDHOOD TRAUMA ADVERSELY AFFECTS DECISION-MAKING”