Error In Judgement

I consider myself a reasonably wise person because I have managed to keep presence of mind in the crucial moments of my life. For example, when I was deciding about choosing a university in the US for my graduate program, I refused to go to the university that my consultant picked for me. I had enough sense to understand that she was recommending that university for her own benefit. And even though I had no knowledge and experience in the US education system and US job market, I did sufficient research on my own and picked the university that eventually turned out to be the best choice. Even though at the time when I made that decision, I didn't know if this decision was right or wrong. 

An error in judgement occurs when you rationalize your decision partly by some evidence supporting it and partly by having faith in your intuition. Funnily enough you make the right decision also using these two things. But when your decision goes wrong, it becomes clear to you why it went wrong. You start to see the blind spots that you ignored or were unaware of the first time. That's when you start to blame yourself for not collecting enough evidence before rushing into it. 

Today, I want to revisit all the bad decisions I made in my life which at the time did seem good. Today, I am able to see why they were bad decisions and why I was unable to recognize my bad reasoning at the time of making those decisions. 

1. Insufficient evidence: 

Sometimes, you just believe in your decision based on insufficient evidence. There are times when my decisions went horribly wrong and I wish I had just googled it before taking the decision, or I had opened the second and third search results as well before making the decision only based on the first search result, or I had used better words to google that topic. 

2. Selfishness: 

Sometimes, when you want something really badly, you go for it with a half-ass justification of that decision. You convince yourself that it's the right decision because you are too optimistic about it and you expect the best case scenario. But life doesn't always work on the best case scenario. You should make every decision assuming the worst case scenario. Believe me if you do that, you will avoid a lot of misery in your life. 

3. Assumptions: 

I have made bad decisions in my life because I was just too proud to ask the other person and get clarity about the situation before making the decision. I just assumed that things were exactly how they looked to me but in reality, they weren't. I just tried to connect the dots based on what I was able to see and ended up connecting the wrong dots and made a wrong decision. Instead if I had just asked the concerned person about it, I would have made a more informed decision. 

4. Impatience:

Impatience is my biggest weakness. I have experienced impatience taking over my intellectual faculties like a ghost takes over your soul. I have felt possessed by my impatience. The worst decisions of my life were made during the state of impatience-possessed mind. Thankfully, I have been able to avoid some really really bad decisions in the past few years by gathering enough patience to listen to the right people before taking any rash decision. But still sometimes, I make decisions without thinking it through and it has costed me a lot. 

5. Stubbornness:

Sometimes, I am just too stubborn to see what's going on. I am stubborn about not wasting an opportunity. I am stubborn about how people around me must behave the way I want them to behave because I am right. I am stubborn about things going according to my plan and I have made many errors because of this stubbornness. I am stubborn about believing that I am not stubborn. I am a more self-absorbed person than I like to believe. 

These five are the most common causes why I make error in judgement. In all of these reasons there is an undertone of over confidence. 

A lot of the errors in judgement has happened when I am my most vulnerable self. I am going to remember this and avoid making any decision when I am not mentally sound. I am going to close my eyes, take a deep breath and stop myself when I am about to make a rash decision no mater how right it may seem at the moment. When I am cocky about my decision skills, I am going to talk to the right people. When in doubt, I am going to assume the worst and make the decision accordingly. I wish I could go back in time and do these things before I made all those errors in judgement that went horribly wrong. But what's done is done. I can't turn back time. What I can do now is to acknowledge my weaknesses and work on them so it doesn't happen again. 

Einstein has said- "Two things are infinite. The universe and human stupidity. And I am not sure about the universe." I agree with him. I have been utterly stupid in my life and I have made countless errors in judgement. But I have realized that that's what makes me human. To err is human. I am human, that's why I make mistakes. Knowing this, I am going to forgive myself for making those mistakes. I am going to forgive myself because none of those mistakes hurt anyone but me. I am going to forgive myself for hurting myself. 

I am always going to remember that I make mistakes because I am human.