Choose between a bunch of bad options

In life, we all have choices. We all decide the direction our life takes. But many feel that they don’t have options. They feel forced in one direction.

I tend to sound like a broken record at times when we are working and run into problems. After we analyze the situation and look for numerous ways to respond, we get stuck.

We found several options. But all have consequences. There aren’t any options that are total wins with zero ramifications. They all have pros and cons.

That is usually when I say, “Ok, well we have a bunch of bad options here. Let’s just try to pick the best one and move forward.”

We try to minimize the consequences. We try to maximize the benefits. But they both will always exist.

A lot of people criticize government leaders during stressful times, such as the COVID pandemic. They say they should have shut everything down sooner. Or they say they shouldn’t have shut anything done and let it all work itself out.

They say they should have focused on more testing. Or they should have focused on stopping international travel sooner. They say they should have been better prepared.

But every one of these options contains good and bad. Stopping travel sooner would have meant that many people would have been impacted before anything even happened in our country.

I can imagine the protests if they stripped our rights from us when a virus in another country started. People would be furious. And, we would never know how it could impact us. We would have stopped it before it ever became an issue.

That would be political suicide. And at the time, that measure would seem way too extreme.

Saying we should have been more prepared sounds great. But what would happen in 2018 if the government was trying to raise our taxes for pandemic preparation? Citizens would rebel. They would say we haven’t had one since 1918 and the world is different now. They would say it is unnecessary and just a ploy for government to take more of our money.

Sure, in hindsight, and without having to face any consequences, all of us have the perfect answer. We all see what should have been done.

But that is garbage. That perfect option is an illusion. It never existed and it never will. There will always be pros and cons. But when spewing our opinions, we can safely ignore anything we want. Until we are in the leadership position that has to make that call. Then those consequences get real.

In football they call the person with all the answers after the game, the Monday quarterback. It is easy to see what happened and express a better option after it all happened and without having a chance to test that opinion.

In our life we take the Monday quarterback approach and then expect our self-improvement decisions to be the same way. Except there are no perfect options. In fact, most of the time there aren’t any good options. There are only a bunch of bad options to choose from.

This paralyzes people. I see it all the time. They don’t want to make the wrong call, so they don’t make a call. They defer. They scapegoat. They complain. They push mistakes onto others.

For some reason this seems to be a good political strategy. Because if we make a call on something, we will get criticized for the cons, even when the benefits far outweigh those consequences. In a complex system, we think we can focus on parts of it and ignore other parts.

But nobody sits around after the game criticizing the fan or critic with the opinion. No, they are not even on the field. They have no ability to change the circumstances. They are too meaningless.

In your own life, you can choose to be a bystander. You can choose to be meaningless by not choosing unless it is perfect.

Or, you can realize that perfect is an illusion and do the best you can to make the call you feel is best. At least now you gain control over your life. And you will be more likely to take responsibility for the bad stuff too. Because you know the benefits that you gained. You know the options were all bad choices. But you stepped up and made the call.

That is how you shift from expecting perfection but being stuck, to slowly making progress. You start to make the difficult calls. You analyze the situation. You brainstorm. You try to come up with win-win situations. But at the end of the day, when only bad options exist, you are confident enough to make a decision and face what comes next.