Is there such a thing?
We often hear people say ‘she made a bad choice’ or ‘that was a really bad decision’.
These statements are always made with hindsight and they are often made by others in a critical way. Although, we do say to ourselves ‘I made a bad choice’.
What purpose does it serve to point that out to others or to ourselves? No purpose at all, it will never make us feel good.
We are conditioned to catch others or ourselves doing something wrong. Parents, teachers, employers, the system, and ourselves, seemed to be focussed on wrong decisions. It is all about control, another thing that we seemed to be obsessed with.
Why do we not talk so much about good choices, ‘I made a great choice there’ and celebrate it?
The ‘bad choice’ wasn’t a bad one at the time we made it. No one sets out in the day to mess things up. Every choice that we make, at that moment in time, was the only choice we would have made. Even if we had time machines to go back, which we don’t, yet, we would still make the same choice. That’s because all the choices we make are based on our current mindset, our experience/knowledge up to that point in our lives.
So no point in even dwelling on bad outcomes of choices we made, or listening to the criticism from others. We could just focus instead on celebrating the good choices and realising that we have now and the future to learn from all our choices.
It is all a matter of choice, and once you know the outcome that suits you and your life, then we know the choice to make for our lives. As a ‘bad choice’ is a question of perspective and it’s the outcome we wanted that matters, not the thoughts of the critics.
Philip Dodson 