You get experience only after taking decisions

"The world is yours if you have the heart to take it"! Ratan Tata once said "I don't take the right decisions. I take the decisions and make them right"! Always remember, no decision is a wrong one if you know how to make it right. So decide and move ahead. You will come to know if you are going right or wrong. When you are wrong you have to just make it right. Right decisions spring from right life. We focus so much on the art of decision-making. Even management institutes teach that, right?

Somebody is teaching mathematical modeling for decision-making, somebody is teaching strategic decision-making. What they don’t tell is the most fundamental thing – that the quality of your life is the quality of all your decisions. An ambitious life is going to make ambitious decisions. A scared life is going to make scared decisions. If you want to make the right decisions, then live a right life. The right decision will automatically come from there. Then you don’t even have to worry about a particular decision. All your decisions will be right.

Also remember: you regret only a few decisions. You say, “I took ten decisions, out of which two went wrong.” And you regret them, right? You don’t regret everything. But I am guaranteeing you that if decisions are wrong, then it is not just two decisions that are wrong. It is all ten that are wrong. It is just that you caught two decisions as being wrong. It is just that those two decisions made their effects so visible and apparent that you could say that they have gone wrong. The other eight too are wrong. It is just that right now you are incapable to see how wrong your other eight decisions are.

From the wrong life, everything that emerge will be wrong. Even the simplest decision will be wrong. You will not even know which seat to take in an auditorium. You will not know when to drink water. You will not know which clothes to wear. Even the most trivial decisions will be wrong. You will not know what kind of hair to keep. You will not know how to address your servant. No decision will be right from a wrong mind. It’s a great punishment, is it not?

Let me tell you a real life incident. A CBSE student scoring north of 99% reminded me of a couple of friends of mine. One boy and one girl. I know them for past several years. Both are immensely talented, creative and hard-working ones. Both are one of the most intelligent people I have ever met in my life. Both went to the same college, shared the same stream and also shared a class for a couple of years. But, their decision-making skills are not similar.

The girl, who had also scored north of 99 in her 10th standard, is a keen yet populist decision maker. If you go by the public opinion, then she has hardly made a wrong decision in her life. The boy, on the other hand, is more of an outlaw. He prefers to consult his conscience while taking his decisions and is known for taking anti-populist decisions in his life. If you go by the public opinion, then he has taken several wrong decisions in his life.

Though I don't have any right to, I'll still compare both of them (coz, you know, the society already has, and I also don't have anything else to do). As I have already said, the girl scored to the north of 99 in her 10th std, while the boy hardly managed to score 91 (yes, in today's world, 91 is the new "low score"). The girl decided the smart decision to move to a big city (popular amongst by JEE aspirants) and invest a couple of years in preparing for IIT-JEE (a right decision indeed!).

The boy, who also decided to prepare for IIT-JEE and also joined a class, decided to do most of the study at his home, and at the crucial time, decided to focus on a better his fitness rather than study for JEE, coz apparently, he felt that weight loss was more important than getting into an IIT. Both of them couldn't crack JEE and ended up in my college, a simple tier-2 college. The girl, the talented decision maker, decided that she has wasted her life by joining this college, and decided to have more fun. Also, as she knew how to score (the typical study-what-comes-in-exam method), she could easily score good marks. So, she invested the free time to join extracurriculars profile, joined sports and organising teams and built a stellar profile.

Our boy thought, and just kept studying. He decided that understanding things are more important than anything else, so he just studied and hardly joined any other extra-curricular's. In the end, he built a simple academically oriented profile nothing glamorous about it. Again, our talented girl decided to go for MBA entrance tests, because she knew where she could earn money. And though she failed to crack those exams, it didn't matter that much, because she had already taken a job from the placement process. Smart girl.

And the boy, well, he decided to do a boring M.Tech., failed to crack GATE and had to stay at his home for a year, because this asshole didn't appear for the placement process. So what do you think, who must be more successful now? The girl, who apparently, took all the right decisions, or the boy, who apparently, made a mess of his life by taking so many bad decisions in his life? I know, your answer must be the girl. But what if I tell you, that you are wrong? Yes, you are.

Our talented girl, who though scored good marks, does not know anything about her field, so she had to take a job in an IT company. Her passion was travelling and photography (which she pursued a while), but as she fell back to a safe option. From last what I have heard, she is still struggling to make a mark there. She has probably lost all her desire to be something and is cursing every day. On the other hand, our asshole boy, who took so many wrong decisions and (apparently) wasted a year, topped the college, will join a renowned IIT for his M.Tech. in coming weeks and is thinking about starting an unconventional business (which, again, will be condemned by the most of us). Believe it or not, that guy is a complete box of knowledge, is respected by several, and is a source of inspiration to me. It's all because he followed his passion (which, shockingly, is engineering) and worked hard throughout his life. These two people collectively taught me a very important lesson:

Life is not about taking the right decisions, it's more about making the decisions right! And he is not the only one. There are and were several others like him. Columbus's decision to find India turned out to be a wrong one, but hell yeah, he found out America. Ford, maybe took some wrong decisions and 'wasted' almost 20 years of his life, but then he is the reason why you have that new car in your backyard. Therefore, all those (like me) around there, don't worry if you have taken (or are taking) any wrong decision. Life will give you an opportunity to turn them into the right ones. All you need to have is some amount of passion and an ability to work hard. Cheers!