These days, lots of experts want to give you advice on how to handle the big decisions in your life, like buying your first home, selecting a career, or deciding whether or not to have children. This is good, as we could all use a little advice about big decisions. But! What about the small decisions? How important are they? Do we need any guidance in how we handle them?

We make hundreds of small decisions every day, and we don’t usually give them much thought. We don’t agonize over the little things, like, “what colour socks shall I wear today?” or, “shall I have jam or jelly on my toast?” It’s almost like we have an automatic response mechanism in our brain, which quickly accesses our value system, and then gives us a speedy response to simple decisions.

Now I don’t want to make you paranoid, but these hundreds of so called “no-brainers” can actually have huge ramifications on all of our lives. Some of the stupidest, most dangerous things we will ever do in will result out of small decisions that we should have given more thought. This is especially true of decisions concerning safety.

Did you know that young people from ages 14 to 25 have the highest mortality rate in this country? It’s true. They also have the highest rate of being permanently disabled. According to The economic burden study of Unintentional Injuries in 1999, such injuries cost Ontarians $2.9 Billion in 1996, and rose to a staggering $8.7 billion in 1998. Of the total 739,856 injuries, 15,232 resulted in partial permanent disability and 1,141 resulted in permanent and total disability. Another 2,844 resulted in death. According to the study, the most common of these injuries is a simple fall. These statistics speak for themselves: a lot of people are not thinking before they act.

You’ve probably seen a bad small decision go on right in front of your eyes. Perhaps you’ve been in a car with a reckless driver, in a hurry to get somewhere, putting his promptness before your safety. Or maybe you’ve had a friend with a motorcycle who offers to take you for a spin, but does not have an extra helmet or proper training to drive with a passenger. These all seem like little decisions at the time, but they can have life changing results. I know. I was once a victim of someone else’s bad decision.

About 14 years ago a young man named John made a decision, one he may have made several times before. He had a few drinks, celebrating his birthday, with his sister and brother-in-laws. He decided he was safe to drive home. That night he crushed 3 people and ruined his own life. A young girl was put in a wheel chair forever. A cop who was on the scene investigating a previous accident, took 8 months to make it back to work, and it took me, the third person, 7 years to learn to walk without supports. I spent three years in and out of a wheel chair and another 4 years on crutches and canes. Johns’ small decision changed the lives of all of us, including the families of those whom he hurt. He went to jail, lost his job, and then had to rebuild his life.

Now, I’m not asking you to make a big painful ordeal out of every small decision. Instead, I want to address that thing inside of you that helps you make those small decisions, namely, your aforementioned value system. Your value system is built upon all of the things that you truly believe, and effects the way you react to even the smallest events in your life. It is like a circuit board inside of your brain, effecting how you think about, and see the world. Some things about that circuit board will never change. Those hard lessons from our childhood, for example, are forever imbedded into our psyches. But, with a little bit of effort and compassion, we can add to that circuit board and make a big impression on how we handle the small decisions, perhaps even to the extent that we end up saving our own lives.

All of us suffer from pain and loneliness from time to time. It is one of the most common and normal experiences of being alive. Often, we feel alone in the universe, struggling against impossible odds. But that is not the only way to look at things. Wise teachers from the beginning of time have coached us to consider the interconnectedness of all things, and how embracing that sense of oneness can help us to be more loving, more kind and more considerate in everything that we do. By seeing that we are all connected, by living your life as though this was your personal truth, you would have no problem turning down a ride from an unsafe driver because you would know immediately that the risk you are taking is not just your own. You begin to see that a careless decision on your part could hurt many people, including the people who love and depend on you, and the unsuspecting bystanders who just might get in the way of your foolishness.

No one ever wins when someone makes a bad decision. But bad decisions need not rule over us. Instead, we can let compassion rule, and escape the travesties that an egocentric point of view inevitably leads. It really is up to you look deeply into yourself and see how you and all the people around you are truly connected in a way that you never before imagined. Thus, advice on how we handle the small things can turn into the first step to discovering a great inner peace.


Michael McGauley- The Dream Builder