Hard Choices
Morra Aarons-Mele is one of the smartest people I know, and I love her LinkedIn newsletter. She recently wrote about moving her mother into a memory care unit, and she outlined a hard choice model, pointing out the difference between four types of difficult choices.
Big decisions are not all alike.
I mean, we know this instinctively, but seeing it in the squares made me realize how often I brought the same decision-making anxiety to situations that fall in different categories, such as “big choice” and “hard choice.” And how they actually require different mental framing.
But what I loved was her acknowledgment that we can never know if the choices we make is the “right” choice because we never see the other option play out. Maybe even if things turn out well, the other option would have been better. Knowing that we can’t know can be terrifying OR it can be liberating. It’s not about getting everything right. It’s about making a choice and accepting the situation until the next decision comes along.
I made the practical choice, which I hope is also the loving choice. The truth is we’ll never know, and that’s the reality of hard decisions. You just do the best you can with the information that you have at the time.
Go read her newsletter if you’re not already getting it.
3 comments
That was an interesting article. Thanks for sharing it with us.
Fascinating. I liked this statement, “Not making a decision is actually making a decision.” So, procrastinating or avoiding a decision isn’t actually avoiding at all, but (probably) a not so great decision. Thanks for sharing!
I skimmed her article. It seemed like a hard part of her decision was that her mom could not have her cat in the memory care unit. I can’t comment on her article because I don’t have an L.I. account, but I can share here that they make stuffed animal cats for people with dementia. You can search online “stuffed animal cat for dementia” and find several options. I work in a long-term care facility and have seen some residents find comfort in carrying around a baby doll like they are used to from the days when their kids were babies. With hard choices, there are almost always more options than we initially see!
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