Making decisive decisions on indecisiveness

Life is tough and throws so many challenges at us as well as pleasant encounters. Quite often, it is full of tough decisions, ambiguity, dilemmas, seemingly no-win situations and there are times when we are simply helpless and don’t know what to do. In the words of Jose Ortega y Gassett, “Life is fired at us pointblank.” Regardless of all these, we are still required to do something.

With the many uncertainties and unpredictable circumstances that surround us in today’s society, there are many justifiable reasons why people remain indecisive about things concerning them. It may come across that life itself is confusing.

For people like Hamisu Mustapha, a student of the University of Abuja, “When I am faced with situations where I am indecisive and cannot take a decision on a certain issue, I sleep over it. Most times, by the following morning, I’ll begin to see it lighter than I did when the event initially took place. This way, I am now able to reflect objectively and take the right decisions. If it is still a tough one, at this stage with my mind clearer, I can decipher who the best person to help me resolve the problem is and I go to him to ask for help.”

Hope Idoreyin said, “I think it is my responsibility to first and foremost figure out the right thing to do, then, how best to go about it using a specific approach. When I am sure of this, I go ahead and act.”

Angela Idowu said she used to rely a lot on reading literatures to help her out with indecisiveness. She found that they usually came to nothing for her in the end. “Sometimes, people write psychology or Christian literatures to help people deal with certain situations and problems. What I have come to realise is that even when I read these things and try to understand them to the best of my ability and then effectively apply the remedies to my situations, it turns out that I have invested so much time and practically veered off the real problem that was mine.

“I say so, because for me, their whole approach assume that we have not only the willingness to do so but also the willpower to follow through what we intended to do. Finally, this assumes – and this is a huge assumption – that if we actually go through all that work and effort, that the advice they are giving us will work. If it doesn’t work (and this happens with saddening regularity), I could get more frustrated than I originally was at the beginning,” she said.

Psychologist Mabel Nwakalor said, “I’ll begin by assuming that life itself is an immensely complex and difficult phenomenon. However, many of us deny this and find ways to avoid facing that fact.

“As with a lot of situations, it seems that there are two extremes that many of us tend to fall into when faced with this: on the one end, there are the impulsive and rash ones who make decisions that are often rash and impulsive; on the other end, there are those who suffer from chronic indecision and become paralysed by it.”

According to experts, “There are times when life offers us fairly simple, straightforward, right-versus-wrong choices: we can either A) save the world, or B) torture innocent children. In cases like this, for most sane people, there is no indecision, no dilemma. The “right thing to do” is obvious and clear-cut.

“But life is rarely that clear-cut. More often, in the real world, we’re torn by conflicts and dilemmas, having to act without knowing all the factors, having to choose when all the apparent options seem imperfect.

“Life is often full of decisions like these – on the same scale and on a smaller scale. The really tough choices then don’t centre upon right versus wrong. They involve right versus right. They are genuine dilemmas precisely because each side is firmly rooted in one of our basic core values . . . the basic issue at the heart of so many ethical conflicts (is) the clashing of core values,” said Rushworth M. Kidder.

In other words, some say that life itself is a loan, a seemingly insolvable puzzle that must be solved and there will always be an element of indecision until we do. In other words, to truly solve indecisiveness at the core, one must solve the core riddle of human nature, the fundamental ambiguity in the human condition, the “problem that causes all other problems” – which basically means undertaking a journey to understand ego, spirituality, faith, love and everything else that goes along with life.