Why Accountability To Self-Discovery And Life-Long Learning Is The Key To Making Good Decisions?
What is a good decision anyway?
Is there such a thing as a good and bad decision?
Often it is the bad decisions which teach us the most about who we are and what we stand for.
Some key bad decisions if unchecked and not acted upon quickly to correct, however, can lead to long term suffering, pain, trauma, loss and adversity. We can’t avoid making bad decisions but we can mitigate the bad decision as soon as we realise we have a made a mistake.
Other key decisions lead to prosperity, happiness, stability, and joy.
We want to get good and better at making good strategic key decisions which lead to positive outcomes.
How self-discovery fits in, is that it helps us determine which decision will lead to which outcome, especially if we have made the mistake before, and are faced with the same decision again. This is a common scenario and until we learn, often the same scenario will recur. (It is often disguised in a different outfit though.)
What are some key decisions?
The decision whether to trust someone or something (or not) when:
· entering into a business partnership
· entering into or leaving a relationship
· investing money
The decision whether to trust yourself (or not) when:
· moving state or country
· buying/selling assets and property
· investing money
· taking a job or leaving a job and
· starting/quitting your own business.
(And there are many more, and this list is simply the tip of the ice-berg.)
Research, Foresight, Trust and Intuition are huge factors in the process of making good key decisions.
Not making a decision and letting decisions happen for us or around us, is also in effect making a decision, and by not deciding and taking ownership, this can have detrimental effects as well.
A decision might be the right one for some time but over time we change and our priorities change, and how quickly or slowly do we change to correct course.
If we don’t know how to conduct research to become informed, learn from our mistakes and apply self-forgiveness, trust ourselves by knowing who we are, what makes us happy, what are our key values, and how to tap into our intuition, then it is not only going to be harder, but put us at risk of making the wrong move.
Making the wrong move repeatedly is not the goal.
Asking better questions uncovers answers, makes us delve and dig deeper, and ultimately helps in the decision-making process.
Research
The systematic investigation into and study of materials and sources in order to establish facts and reach new conclusions.
Gives us information which is power.
The more informed we are the more confident (or not) we feel.
In the research phase ask yourself:
What do I need to know?
What do I need to learn?
What is my objective?
Foresight
The Ability to tap into outcomes from the past to anticipate what is up ahead.
Ask yourself:
What have I learned from the past about this current situation?
Trust
A firm belief in the reliability, truth, or ability of someone or something.
Ask yourself:
What do I know to be true about myself?
What am I afraid of?
Who Am I?
Intuition
The ability to understand something instinctively, without the need for conscious reasoning.
Take some time out away from the noise and other people’s opinions and agendas.
Ask yourself:
What is my gut saying?
You know yourself better than anyone, and it is whether you have cared to notice and record your observations, tendencies, and key learnings from the past, which facilitates decision making to become easier in the present.
When it comes to foresight you might not have any yet, especially when you are young because you have not yet faced certain situations where you need to make a key decision, but you do have a gut instinct.
Do you have the confidence to trust your gut and act upon it?
Do you have the ability to conduct research, read and learn?
The answer to this is most likely yes and therefore means none of us are completely powerless.
Education and reading form a big part of self-discovery, but a lot of it can only be learned through the school of hard knocks and hind-sight is a wonderful thing.
So as soon as you realise something is wrong the key is to do something about it. Take action.
Knowing something is wrong and not doing anything about it, is sad. Life is short and if this is your tendency you could consider some kind of coaching or therapy to unpack what makes you stagnate in a toxic situation of pain or discomfort. This is where accountability becomes crucial. The longer you stay in a toxic situation the more damaging it is.
There is a difference between good pain and discomfort, which forms part of pushing through to get an outcome, which leads to success, but this is not the type of pain I am talking about.
Case Study
I am going to use myself as a case study here.
I have been through a divorce. I would attribute this to the fact that when I got into the relationship I did not really understand myself enough to know what type of person was my best fit. I did not care to look and do the work that you need to do when you are entering into a serious relationship such as marriage. Did my gut instinct scream out at me? Initially yes, when I first met my ex-husband, but later on, I ignored these feelings and rushed into the marriage.
(Why did I rush into such a major decision such as marriage? There is a lot to this story which I will go into, in a later article.)
As often happens children are conceived unexpectedly and because of becoming parents my ex-husband and I both believed we had to make it work, at the expense of our own personal happiness. We tried and gave it a go.
Many times, along the way it was apparent that the relationship was not going well, but because we were both afraid to look, we stayed and became more and more unhappy. We were both committed to Vipassana meditation and went away a lot on silent meditation retreats. This really was the thing that held it together for such a long time, until my ex-husband could no longer ignore his screaming intuition which was telling him to get out.
He was really able to look and reprioritise his life after his mum died, which was a big catalyst for him and eventually he left me. I at the time was still in denial and terrified to look and face my own truth.
Triggers for me during the marriage were that I often became a crazy lunatic mum that used to scream at my husband and daughter and pop the fuse too often. This made me, and all of us unhappy. My communication was ineffective. Why was I behaving like this? I had gotten stuck in this addictive behaviour and despite how hard I tried, I simply could not fix the problem. The real problem was that my ex-husband’s behaviour triggered me far too much, we were so different. His behaviour often went against my core values and I could never articulate what was going on and what was wrong. So, I became the problem, because of my communication.
I was raised in toxicity, I came from a family of domestic violence, mental illness and alcoholism where my mum stayed with my dad because of her faith and belief in the dogma of the Catholic Church. My mum believed that to be a good Catholic she had to remain and put up with violence. Like most women caught in domestic violence she was also afraid that my dad would kill her (and us) if she left him.
From my upbringing, I was carrying on the toxic communication and the beliefs that you had to stay together as family, no matter what, at the expense of your personal happiness and joy.
During the marriage, I did not really do the work. I went to counselling sometimes, but never stuck with it. I did not really understand myself or what was triggering me. I went to meditate which was helpful, but it was not enough to understand myself. I had not unpacked the effects of my child-hood and how that was impacting my behaviour in the present.
Since then I have done (and continue) to do the work, and through the process, I have learned about myself and who I am. The outcome was a blessing in disguise ultimately, like most adversity.
I have put together a spreadsheet of the tools and education options available, in your quest to learn more about who you are called Who Am I.
I wish I had tapped into these options earlier, and had implemented a lot of this education and knowledge sooner, and that I had committed to therapy and coaching. When you work with a professional you accelerate your leaning and results. Accountability comes into play and this is a game-changer.
If you would like a copy of my Who Am I spreadsheet, leave a comment below, or email me at info@visionaccountable.com.au
The more you learn about who you are, the better chance you have of making the right decisions and living a life filled with prosperity, joy and fulfilment.
Ultimately, there is only learning and no good or bad decisions.