HOW TO MAKE LIFE-DEFINING HARD DECISIONS
HARD DECISIONS CAN’T BE MADE WITH RATIONALITY ALONE
We all make many easy and fast decisions each day about mundane and ordinary problems in life, without even thinking about them. But we know that many important decisions in life require a certain amount of thinking before we make them.
The thinking and decision-making process has been beautifully discussed by Nobel laureate, Princeton University Psychologist Dr. Kahneman in his book entitled Thinking Fast and Slow. He divides and assigns thinking and decision-making processes into two distinct systems: System I and System II.
System I decision making is fast, automatic, reflexive and unconscious. It requires extraordinarily little or no thinking. We all acquire this ability from birth. It is energy saver and practical for mundane daily tasks, and most importantly, it is life saver in emergency situations we face in life where there is no time for thinking and decision making.
Doctors rely heavily on System I decision making in urgent medical situations to save lives. System I decision making become refined with the passing of time, accumulated experiences and knowledge.
System II decision making, on the other hand is conscious, slow, and deliberate. It requires much more thinking. It uses the cerebral cortex and higher mental faculties and 20% of brain’s energy expenditure for thinking and decision making. System II decisions are rational and objective and when in use, it rules out all System I decisions.
Even though life defining decisions belong to system II, as I see it, they are even harder to make. Life defining decisions have been defined by the expert as decisions that would dramatically change the path of life of decision maker and as well as people related to him. Because these decisions tend to be more subjective than objective with the involvement of personal feelings, biases, cultural influences in the decision-making process. Non–objective decisions, usually tend to end up with multiple regrettable consequences in the future.
We use three diverse types of decision-making processes:
1.Easy, automatic fast decisions: They are made without thinking for routine and mundane problems of daily life, as well as urgent life-threatening situation such as a fire or other dangers.
2. Difficult, problematic decisions: These decisions are made for the more difficult problems we face in life, such as choosing a college, deciding on your major, figuring out which city to live, or if you should work for some company or set up your own business and many more similar decisions that require more rational thinking, investigation, consultation, data collection, even making a plus and minus list before making a final decision.
3. Life-defining hard decisions: These decisions cannot be made with rationality alone. To me, the most important life –defining decisions are whether to get married or remain unmarried.
Choosing a person to get married to and to become your other half for the rest of your life is not an easy task. You must do your best to remain objective, not allowing your emotions, loneliness, being in love or lust to influence your decision. You must do serious homework regarding the person you are about to get married: Who is this person? Are your personality characteristics compatible? How many things in life, you have in common? Do you share any hobbies that you enjoy doing it together? Is your education level the same? Do you share the same cultural, moral, ethical and, family values? And many more questions could be asked, and a list of plusses and minuses be prepared. The more plusses there is, the better it is. If this type of homework is not done, and a rational decision is not made, then there is a 50% chance that this marriage (like all marriages) would end up in divorce.
Another important life-defining decision after marriage is whether to have children. Having children serve many purposes. It strengthens the marital bounds; it guarantees that when parents get old or disabled their children would make decisions for them and take care of them. In addition, parents live genetically in their children. If for some reasons, married couples cannot have children, they should seriously consider adapting one.
The other most difficult, life-defining decision is, after certain age, to immigrate to another country with a completely different language, tradition, social and religious cultures. I was born, raised, and educated in Turkey. I immigrated to the USA after the age of thirty. I faced unbearable difficulties of learning a new language and adjusting to the American way of life. After living fifty years in America, I can say that I lost my Turkish identity, and I know that I am also completely Americanized, either. When I am in Turkey, I miss America and when I am in America, I miss Turkey. I’m lost in my mixed emotions towards both countries.
I made both life-defining, tough decisions and I can easily say that these types of decisions cannot be made with rationality, nor with analysis of plusses and minuses of relevant events. Paralysis in analysis often occurs. At this point, our emotions, gut feeling, and inner voice become overwhelming in our decision making. Even though having good luck is important, life is more than logic and analysis of plusses and minuses.
At the end, our decisions and how we made them define us, and they determine who we are and who we might become.
