Not Having All the Answers...

Yesterday, I had a very personal situation that I went into thinking one thing and came out with a totally different perspective. I have often been accused of being maniacal about controlling my life.  This is very true. I have my life planned out until I'm 80 for crying out loud (I figured 80 is a good life. Anything after that is pure gravy), but when I was in this particular situation, I truly was not sure how to proceed.  There were times that I wanted to get up and just walk away.  Other times when I wanted to just scream at the other person and tell them they were wrong and being ridiculous for their attitude and perception. In the end, however, I didn't do either.  I thought through the conversation logically and made the responses that I thought were best warranted for the time.  I'm not sure if what I said was right or completely wrong, but what I did come out of that conversation with was a sense of IT'S OKAY sometimes when you don't have all the answers.  Actually, by being comfortable with not always feeling as if we have all the answers, we are able to approach situations with a purity and clarity that often allows us to come out of the situation the best way possible.  I believe this is true for several reasons.

NO RULE BOOK
For someone like me who knows what he wants to do when he's 50, not having a plan is hard. Approaching situations with this philosophy will take a great deal of pressure off. We all have to realize that LIFE DOES NOT HAVE A RULE BOOK.  While there may be certain principles or guidelines one can use to guide his/her life, at the end of the day, no one has EVER lived the exact same life as yours or gone through the exact same situations as you.  Therefore, you cannot take rules and regulations that were created by someone hundreds of years ago and allow them to dogmatically make decisions for you.  One of the many great things about being Man is that we were given the ability to think for ourselves.  When faced with a situation, we should take time to truly digest everything and go with the best decision for that moment, not trying to live up to some creed or code that has been passed down to us that isn't truly applicable to today's times.  Each of us has the freedom to make our own rule book up as we go along. Don't allow others to take this freedom from you.  The freedom that we can have by allowing the world to flow as it does and making the best decision for the time will give us great leverage to do what is inherently natural for us. While this may not ALWAYS lead to the best decision, our natural inclinations are very strong indicators of the course of action that we should take.

WE MAKE MORE "NATURAL" DECISIONS
Often we try to "out think" the situation and are, therefore, somewhat paralyzed to make a decision. By going into a situation without preconceived answers, we allow ourselves the opportunity to let the moment help guide us into the best course of action.  By approaching situations with an open mind, we will more quickly make the decision that we feel is more natural and often more decisive.  We are all hardwired a certain way for whatever reason. In Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink," he writes about how our past has shaped us so holistically that often our "spur of the moment" decisions are really the result of years and years of inculcation of our character based on our past experiences. For this reason, often the decision/reaction that comes most naturally to us is the one that is best,  based on who we all are individually.  By approaching situations with an open mind and without the "answers to the test", we allow this to happen more naturally.

IT MAKE IT EASIER TO NOT SECOND GUESS
In combination with feeling more natural when making a decision, our openness in our approach to a situation will often make it easier for us to accept our decision once it is made.  How many times have you felt instinctively that you should do or say something, but you hold back because of societal norms or regulations telling you what you should do?  Afterwards, however, we often regret our inability to act and feel that we missed our opportunity.  By focusing on what seems to come natural, we will more quickly react to the situation at hand and feel more comfortable with our decision afterwards, as we will know what we did was best for us at the time.

I have often felt that if I don't know the answer to how to approach something in life with a single philosophy, then I was doing something wrong and needed to figure it out. What yesterday taught me, however, is that life is very complicated. There are truly very few "full cover" philosophies that will give us the answer to approach every problem or situation.  What we do have to do in each situation, however, is to think through it logically and make the best decision at the time. That's it. At the end of the day, we're all trying to do the best we can...

Ken Middleton is an Account Executive at TEKsystems that specializes in IT staffing and services. He is a graduate of UNC-Pembroke and current MBA student at Scheller College of Business at Georgia Tech.

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