Sometimes we don't decide our fate

No different from life itself, business ownership is a collection of decisions—both conscious and subconscious. Each choice we make, whether good or bad, compounds onto the next, regardless of our desire to undo them or wish for a different outcome.

Some decisions are straightforward, carrying no weight and offer only positive returns. Other decisions we’re forced to make—ones we later wish we hadn’t—and we cling to them with false hope that we’ll have time to correct them somewhere down the road. I think of those decisions as “buyer’s remorse.”

And then there are the decisions we never had the chance to make at all. The ones that were made for us—out of our control—and yet manage to shape us profoundly. We become subject to fate in these situations and are left to endure their outcomes and their legacy.

As a business owner I saw my fair share of major decisions that needed to be made, and that shouldn’t be surprising to anyone reading this. Decision-making is really Business 101. I will forever enjoy pulling the levers of business—making decisions, watching to see how each plays out, and using what I observe to improve my course of action.

What made business ownership so exciting was this constant need to refine, adjust, and adapt with every lesson learned. There was nothing more rewarding than watching my choices unfold in real time—successes and failures alike revealing what worked and what didn’t. However, based upon the timing of when I started my business (one year before Covid hit), and many other rather unbelievable events that occurred throughout, the decisions I made were almost always out of urgency or desperation versus sound business practices, solid judgment, or prior business planning.

Impossible decisions, I define as decisions that must be made against what the data or common sense would tell you to do. It’s a decision that you ultimately know better than to make, but must be made given the hand you were dealt. In these situations, there is never an option to just do nothing and sit back to wait it out. Something must be done! The clock is ticking, and any indecision equals a loss of time and/or money.

Impossible decisions are derived from a sense of urgency, desperation, or a fight-or-flight approach. But the result of your impossible decision is that the problem you have been tasked to solve does not improve. The problem never disappears—it lingers, festers, and eventually metastasizes within an already weakening business, relationship, or life circumstance.

Much like dominoes that begin to fall, the decision you made out of grave necessity now sets off a chain of events that forces you to tackle additional problems, each stemming from that one earlier decision you felt compelled to make. Each problem taxes you more and more mentally and physically as they erode your energy and resources. Ultimately, as in my case, you officially stop running the business because you are now being run by the business.

In your case, maybe your energies are spent on a relationship, not a business. In that case, you too hope to be an active present partner rather than someone who is absent and unengaged and merely rolling along within the tides at your relationship’s mercy.

Regardless, if you are running your own business or are just trying to navigate life more on your terms, impossible decisions are unavoidable. We know these decisions will eventually land in our laps; they are part of life. We can choose how to effectively manage risk versus reward when faced with these decisions, so we can remain in control and continue to run either our business or our life in a productive, efficient manner.

Disclaimer: My blog is written in journal entry form. I write to improve my writing skills. There might be grammatical errors, but that is okay, because I am human. So please forgive me. It’s not perfect, but neither am I.