Fellow humans,
At what age do we become responsible for our decisions? This is an impossible question with unlimited responses. The only thing I know for sure is that I’m responsible for all of my decisions at age 30.
At my age, and in a sense, nobody is looking out for me. I mean people care about me and love me, and would help me if I ask, but nobody is consistently and actively doing things behind my back to set me up for success. My success or failure is entirely up to me, as it should be.
According to the Bible, there will be a time for each of us to be judged as individuals. I’ve never experienced God’s judgement, but I presume His judgement is somehow or somewhat based on our individual decisions. The part that always gets me a little worked up is that we don’t know when that will happen.
Although I feel successful overall, I also feel like I’ve made more bad decisions than good ones. Obviously my bad decisions weren’t bad enough to cause my incarceration or death, but bad nonetheless. Maybe I’m 51% good, and 49% bad — just enough to tip the scale.
Thinking about the decision-making process — emotional decisions are unnecessarily dangerous. We don’t think about the variety of consequences when we’re emotional. Our judgement is easily clouded by our strong feelings in that particular moment.
Anger and excitement have always been my two biggest weaknesses when making decisions. Sometimes I simply haven’t learned from my mistakes, and end up making a similar bad decision again. However, sometimes I find myself in an entirely new scenario, and I don’t know how to react.
It’s so easy to become discouraged after countless mistakes. It’s so easy to become callous or cold. It’s so easy to give up, but where does that lead us?
Satan wants us to believe that we are defined by our bad decisions. He wants us to dwell on all the bad stuff we’ve done, and the mistakes we’ve made. The last thing he wants is for us to realize and understand that Jesus Christ died for our salvation.
I’ve been learning to detach from unfamiliar situations when they get intense. When something unexpected happens that causes me to have an emotional response, and I’ve never dealt with that type of situation before, it might be best if I temporarily detach, and think of the best possible decision before reacting. The Jocko Podcast goes into much better detail about how to succeed under pressure, and you can find that by clicking here.
The point of this technique is simple — to make the best possible decisions as often as possible. All of us are trying to live our best lives, right? Decisions based on intelligence, wisdom, and experience produce much better results than emotional decisions.
In the end — our individual lives are our individual responsibilities, and we will answer for ourselves. The best way for us to make the best decisions is to build our emotional intelligence one good decision at a time. When we succeed, we will be rewarded.
Matthew 24:12-13 (Words of Jesus)
Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.
Until next time,
Salvatore Norge