The Difference Between Good and Bad Decisions

I recently heard a great quote about decisions from Tom Selleck’s character on Blue Bloods:

That’s the thing about decisions. You usually don’t have to talk yourself into making the right one.

How true this is! It’s caused me to pay more attention to the things I’m trying to talk myself into as I chart out the next steps of my vocational journey. If I’m having to work too hard to make a decision or go in a certain direction then it may be a sign that I’m about to make the wrong decision.

Several years ago Heather and I were really struggling to make a decision about whether or not to go work with a new church that was inviting us to join their team. We had no peace about going and ultimately decided not to go. But we almost said yes. If we had, it would have been because we had talked ourselves into it. We both agree now that it would have been a terrible decision.

This principle has a counterpart that can also help us identify what is the right thing do, especially when we don’t want to do it. I recently had to make a decision that was tough for me personally. In the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t that big of a deal, but I was struggling with it. I realized that instead of trying to talk myself into doing something, I was trying to talk myself out of doing something that I already knew was the right thing to do.

Many times the right thing to do is the harder thing to do. But if deep down we already know that it is the right thing to do, then the decision has already been made on the heart level. That’s when we start trying to talk ourselves out of doing the right thing.

We don’t usually have to talk ourselves into the right decisions, but sometimes we will try to talk ourselves out of doing what’s right.

Here’s a maxim to try on for size:

We talk ourselves into bad decisions; We talk ourselves out of good ones.

How does this square up with your experience?

And while I’m at it, let me go ahead and meddle just a bit:

What are you trying to talk yourself into these days?

What are you talking yourself out of?