Impossible choices, Part 2: What's the "Right" Choice

When I worked at the University Advisement Center, 18 year old freshmen would sit crying in my office unable to chose a major. They were paralyzed with an obsession for making "the right choice". This was such a common occurrence (especially at this time of the year). The most common mistake I felt they were making was letting too many voices get into their heads.

Mom says, "You need to make good money"
Dad says, "Make me proud - remember, I'm paying BIG for this!"
Little Brother says, "Your ass better graduate on time - I'm not sharing college with you too"
Cool Aunt says, "Be yourself" (whoever that is!)

...and the student him/herself, eager to avoid screwing up, wants all of these things and cannot find that perfect major or combination of majors/minors that will please everyone. So instead they spin their wheels and their choices narrow and narrow with time. Then they feel bitter when circumstances end up making the decisions for them.

I take the following things from watching this unfold over the years...
1) Unless you have flawless and far reaching psychic powers, you will not have all of the information about every option. Gather as much information as you can gather quickly, but do not let information gathering take the place of making the decision.
2) Act! Your options are typically best and broadest initially.
3) Commit. Stop dwelling on the options that you set aside. I think that there is some merit to reviewing the choice you did make, but we all know what happens to people who try to run forward while looking over their shoulders.

Another really big thing I try to do is to really focus on what I want. Someone once told me that if you are ever totally torn over two options, put it to a coin toss. If you flip the coin and are happy with the outcome, you were probably leaning that direction anyway. If you flip and then are desperate for a "do over", clearly, you wanted the other choice more. I know it is important to consider the impact of your decisions on other key players in your life...but to a limit.

My mother is the walking breathing example of this. Undergrad from Cornell (Phi Beta Kappa), Masters from University of Michigan, she joined the US Foreign Service and served in Uruguay. She had a bright and promising career - and then she met my dad. Although she barely knew him, she quit her job, got married. Three kids later and more than 15 years into a horrible marriage, she decided to go back to Law School, but she had abandoned us long before that. She hid from her abusive husband at work and then at school, then at her new job as an attorney.

She is here visiting me now and we talked for 4 hours last night. She is disappointed with how her life turned out and she has a list of people that she blames - including me. Over and over again, I kept saying that it was her choices that have caused her problems. She will never agree with that assessment because she has filled her life with scapegoats for a reason...

It's far easier to throw your hands up and blame others, than it is to put all of the weight for your fate onto your own shoulders.

So here's what I know... the people whom I love, I love because of who they are, not where they are or what they do. Those people know that they can count on me, no matter where I am or what I'm doing. Therefore, the most important thing for me to consider is myself and what would make me happy. Or I will end up like my mother, constantly taking the path of least resistance and claiming that I did it in sacrifice to ones that love - that way I can later be bitter and blame them for my unhappiness.

P.S. - I quit the Eagles. I had to...I'm gearing up for my 6th trip to Sarajevo and I would have had to work the Bengles preseason game yesterday (the stadium was practically empty after half-time, but I would have had to put in 10-12 hours anyway) and the Eagles Carnival tomorrow. It just got to be too much...even for me...