Three Tough Decisions You Shouldn't Avoid

Big Picture

Often the challenge is that we persist on a wrong path, because we never stop to reconsider. The things that matter most, like following your dreams and curving out personal time are subordinate to the busy inbox and catching up on social media. If you're not careful, you'll wake up one morning wailing like Zanele.

Why should you care?

We are stuck with a limited number of productive years; many options vanishing as we age. If we are not careful, soon we will be 70, glorifying the small things we did, but intensely regretting the things we never tried. I hope our regret won't be as deep as Zanele's.

Case in point: Wailing at dawn

In the uncharacteristic frigid Durban winter of this year, a wailing voice was heard every dawn from the homeless shelter. It was Zanele crying the misfortunes which led her to the shelter at age 42.

For her entire career, nothing warned her, as she was lucky to get a customer service learnership at 21. When she got an opportunity to be a data entry clerk before finishing her learnership, she saw no need to complete her learnership. She wanted to be an Accountant like the treasurer at her Church, not a customer service clerk.

When she spoke to that Church treasurer once, a certificate course in accounting was recommended. Life happened. Her sick mother, a few failed relationships and monthly rent. Soon she was 35 and too embarrassed to enroll for that certificate course with school leavers.

Unfortunately, at age 41 her company closed down due to the Covid pandemic. Nobody wanted to employ a 41-year-old data capturer. She was now being shunned even by her closest friends and relatives. With nowhere to go, she was now wailing in a homeless shelter.

The question is, at what point could Zanele have made a decision to avoid her tragedy? What decisions are we not making which will lead to disaster? Let's consider these three.

Lesson: Three Critical life decisions

1. When did you settle for an okay job and decide not to follow your dreams? We know our dreams are important because Bronnie Ware in her book The Top Five Regrets of the Dying says, one key regret of the dying was "I wish I had lived a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me".
2. When did you decide to be all consumed by work with no time to enjoy yourself? This is another key finding from the above book.
3. Did you really decide to drift away from your family?

Bottom line

What is scary is that you don't have to make poor decisions to get poor results. What poor results have you seen in your life due to inaction?