You're not an idiot, you just made an idiotic mistake
You’re the sum of all your choices is a phrase that needs to be revisited. I wholeheartedly agree that your lifestyle and results are dependent on your choices, assuming all choices were equal. Some choices allows you to win for a long time (these seem to be rare and few), while other choices straight up ruin your life (these seem to be common). So you can statistically say it’s easier to mess your life up because of one stupid decision. But I’d argued it’s the accumulation of choices and how you react to them is what matters. It’s wiser to be an idiot once or twice, not forever.
I could think all the way back to elementary when I was convinced I was an idiot. I couldn’t put sentences together for an essay, and I couldn’t to simple math to save my life. Everything one thought I was dumb, and I believed them. What I forgot to mention was I still grasping English as a language and my math period came before lunch when I was starving and basically zoning out until the bell rung.
Sure, circumstances, perhaps even excuses led to my behavior but it wasn’t because I was an idiot. It was idiotic decisions. I could have asked my teacher to help me after class, and I could had packed a snack to keep my energy levels up to solve both problems. But what I see people do on a daily basis is make idiotic decisions and convince themselves that’s just how they are.
This is dangerous because it becomes their identity. Once something becomes your identity, you’ll justify anything so it fits your mold of being dumb. You’ll fight tooth and nail because it’s painful to admit something is wrong, especially if it’s your identity that’s at stake.
The long term matters
If you ask a kid what they wanted to be growing up, they’d give you an answer. Of course, it’s rare that they’ll tell you how they plan to make it happen. I believe it’s the same when we make decisions, we don’t think about the long term. Of course, certain decisions don’t need a 5 year forecast, but it’s vital to practice this type of thinking.
I’ve been learning about history of developing nations and it’s riddled with decisions made from the top without considering the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th consequences of their actions. When Mao Zedong was head honcho, as a way to lead his people towards prosperity, he enact a law to kill rodents and birds -pests that was damaging agriculture and limiting harvests. One of those creatures is a sparrow, and the people hunted those birds and destroyed their nests—they were even rewarded for capturing and killing those “pests”.
Turns out, sparrows eat locusts, and locusts eats basically everything they can get their hand on, including fruit and grain. The thing they were trying to save in the first place. With no one to check them locusts began to eat unopposed and left millions of people without food. Millions would starve to death because of the result of not thinking a few steps ahead.
I’m not saying your choices would lead to this, but it’s good to ask ourselves the “but then what happens” question. Let’s say you take on a new job that pays a bit more than your current one. Take some time to write it out and use that question. It pays more, but then my commute is longer so I have to wake up earlier and lose a bit more sleep. Not too bad, but then this new company doesn’t give me a stipend for food like my old one does, so I have to either cook more or spend more money.
It’s a basic exercise that doesn’t require too much time but will give you a bigger picture to help with your decisions.
In other times, you couldn’t help it and made an idiotic mistake that has cost you. This exercise can still help with at least cutting the damages and get you back on the right path.
I remember a friend that invested in a stock and it burdened him night and day when the stock kept going down and down. He wasn’t the type to sell, and he had already lost so much money that the hope of it rising back up to salvageable price was practically zero. I advised him to think it through both scenarios where he wouldn’t sell versus selling. If he wouldn’t sell, he’d spend days agonizing it going lower and the anxiety would cause him to not be able to focus on more important things. If he sold, it would be painful, but a valuable reminder that the market are unpredictable and to learn from this loss. His mind would now be free to make better decisions that could make him more money in the future.
You have to cut your losses if you’re spiraling down and the only way is to detach from the situation and reposition yourself to think better. Emotional decisions often compounds to worst decisions. You have to give yourself the space and time to think if you want to move past it. That’s why I’m not a big fan of auctions or limited time deals. They play on your desire to capture “a good deal” and makes you act on impulse. There’s rarely ever anything worth getting free and there’s always a price to pay.
Big picture
Like many people, we’re tough on ourselves, perhaps too tough. It’s almost like any mistakes eventually self-prophetize themselves into worst situation because we rationalize that we are the type to mess things up. I believe it’s better to accept blame that we messed up, but having the focus to detach in order to make better decisions.
The same goes for when everything is going our way—detach and see what’s working. The moment you commit your identity to something, the harder it’ll be to see the underlying problems or solutions.
Don’t be “married” to your conclusions or assumptions, and be ready to change your mind or tactics at any time.
In Malcolm Gladwell’s book, David and Goliath, he talks about a dyslexic child struggling to go through school. It’s going to be quite hard if you can’t read and comprehend at normal speeds, a tough ordeal for anyone. But instead of believing that he was an idiot like the words of those around him, he worked harder and transition to a path of an attorney. Not the lawyer that spends time reading documents since that would be foolish, but an attorney that focuses on listening and debating. He focused on his strengths and understood his weaknesses.
You and I will definitely make mistakes but we should not let it define who we are. Instead, it’s a learning moment that we can capitalize on that can perhaps shape our future for the better.
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