Sometimes in life it is difficult to determine what the correct decision is for a particular situation. My wife was recently faced with a similar situation while trying to determine whether to return back to work part time.
The issue was that she had always wanted to stay home with the kids – that was her dream. Mine was to have a nice house in a nice area to the raise the kids. We had both gotten what we had wanted. But then my wife started looking for a part time position in order to have some extra cash. She ended up with a couple of hours a week at a local kids clothing store.
The job went well with here working just a couple hours here and there over the course of a couple months. After the Christmas season ended her hours were cut done and so she started looking for something else. She landed a job doing taxes and that is when things started to note work out so well.
The things was the company that she worked for was not managed very well and it was causing a lot of stress for my wife. The kids seemed to do OK with it so we were not too concerned. While my wife’s parents went on vacation for a few weeks she took the time off to stay with the kids. They both loved it.
When it was time to go back she decided not to and quit.
I thought at this point that she would stay home with the kids but instead got another job. This one turned out to be even worse then the one that she had just quit.
Around her 4th day on the job her and I were taking a drive to put the kids to sleep and she was telling me about how bad things were. In the conversation I asked what the reason was for wanting the job in the first place. Her reply wasn’t money, it was habit. See ever since she was in High School she had been working and so it seemed weird not to be working.
With that I assured her that it was normal to feel that way since we are all creatures of habit. I then asked her this – 5 years from now which would you regret more – not staying home with the kids, or not working. She told me that she would regret not staying with the kids. I then told her not be in the place that she would regret her decision now, in the future.
See a lot of times we are so caught up in what is going on here and now that we fail to look to the future. I don’t want to look back on my life in 5, 10, 25, or even 50 year and regret the decisions that I have made.
This type of "future thinking" has helped my make several different decisions such as not to get a tattoo (what Grandpa still feels good about having a tattoo?) and hiring a financial planner. Both of these decisions required me to look deep into the future to think about how I would view my decision when I got there.
If you are facing a tuff decision today stop and take the time to think about how that decision is going to effect you in the future. You may just be surprised with how that can push you one way or another.
Looking to the Future to See what to do Now
The issue was that she had always wanted to stay home with the kids – that was her dream. Mine was to have a nice house in a nice area to the raise the kids. We had both gotten what we had wanted. But then my wife started looking for a part time position in order to have some extra cash. She ended up with a couple of hours a week at a local kids clothing store.
The job went well with here working just a couple hours here and there over the course of a couple months. After the Christmas season ended her hours were cut done and so she started looking for something else. She landed a job doing taxes and that is when things started to note work out so well.
The things was the company that she worked for was not managed very well and it was causing a lot of stress for my wife. The kids seemed to do OK with it so we were not too concerned. While my wife’s parents went on vacation for a few weeks she took the time off to stay with the kids. They both loved it.
When it was time to go back she decided not to and quit.
I thought at this point that she would stay home with the kids but instead got another job. This one turned out to be even worse then the one that she had just quit.
Around her 4th day on the job her and I were taking a drive to put the kids to sleep and she was telling me about how bad things were. In the conversation I asked what the reason was for wanting the job in the first place. Her reply wasn’t money, it was habit. See ever since she was in High School she had been working and so it seemed weird not to be working.
With that I assured her that it was normal to feel that way since we are all creatures of habit. I then asked her this – 5 years from now which would you regret more – not staying home with the kids, or not working. She told me that she would regret not staying with the kids. I then told her not be in the place that she would regret her decision now, in the future.
See a lot of times we are so caught up in what is going on here and now that we fail to look to the future. I don’t want to look back on my life in 5, 10, 25, or even 50 year and regret the decisions that I have made.
This type of "future thinking" has helped my make several different decisions such as not to get a tattoo (what Grandpa still feels good about having a tattoo?) and hiring a financial planner. Both of these decisions required me to look deep into the future to think about how I would view my decision when I got there.
If you are facing a tuff decision today stop and take the time to think about how that decision is going to effect you in the future. You may just be surprised with how that can push you one way or another.
Technorati: Chrisianity, Priorities, Making Decisions, God, Jesus
Photo via Flickr by ozio-bao.