Let's Decide

I was returning from my hometown, Kolkata. As usually it was Rajdhani express since I can't let my mamma get the shock of her life. So needless to say this journey was pretty different from the previous ones. Normally what flows in my mind is when the train will reach Delhi, will I be able to reach home quickly, get dressed fast and reach office within time? But this time there were no such tensions.  Instead of that there were uncertainties. There will be no 'to-do's in office but there will be 'everything-has-to-be-done's in the void. When the sense of accomplishments of deciding not to hold the hands of fate and live a blind life was enthusing more blood through my veins, there was definitely a pinch of apprehension on the abilities that ought to pave the road to glory or to perdition. When I resigned from job a few weeks back, believe me, there was not an iota of doubt. You can name that thing as "belief", "sense of positivity" or just "boiling blood of a poor but an ambitious Bengali". Similar to this there had been a lot of times when I had to take that "hard call" (May be the next version of my Dirty Little Secrets will have a few of them). And I know, most of you had definitely been through similar situation. At the end of the day, the outcomes of these decisions, decides how good or bad were they. There is a Gestation period of every decision. As in period between the day you decide and the day the decision fruits an outcome. And for most of the "hard call" decisions have a long a gestation period. On top of that these gestation periods for each of the decisions are again pipelined  when multiple "hard call" decisions seems to share the same time frame. So my entire concern with all these is that normal day to day life gets pretty fucked up which causes unnecessary stress and we start our catcalls of "work-life balance", "gender equity at work space", "overtime loads, etc. 

To unwind these stresses, to organise them and to be clearer in our mind before taking the next ones, I thought of a matrix.and applied the same on the decisions made by one of my very close friends. The outcome was pretty insightful. That's the reason why I shared the same with you. Just try it once, you might get some valuable insights about you which were lying there deep in your subconscious.

I will walk through the matrix once so that you get a better idea of how it works. There are two axis. On X-axis, you have "HAPPY" on the positive side and "SAD" on the negative side. Similarly on the Y-axis, you have "WORRY' on the positive axis and "CONTENTED" on the negative axis. I will plot a decision on to this plane depending on how much happier or sadder it had made me and also on whether that made me more worrisome or made me feel more contented, Say for example the decision to leave my job made me immensely happy but at the same time it had made me worrisome. (Note: This state of worriness is just after the decision is made and in that gestation period. It has got nothing to do with the outcome). 

Plot all the ones for yourself, as I did it for my friend.

Technically you should not have any decision points in second quadrant. You should not decide anything that makes you sad and also increase your worriness. Undoubtedly, the fourth quadrant are best. But I personally feel the decisions in the third quadrant owns the potentiality for a better outcome and a better living, both at the same time.

Do this exercise for yourself and happy self-introspection.