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It’s easy to make the connection between well-placed, appropriately timed, thought-provoking questions and good decision-making. Simply put: good questions lead to better decisions. And better decisions lead to fewer regrets.
Truth is, most of us resist uninvited questions when making a decision. In the moment, we feel like we’re being questioned rather than simply being asked a question. Big difference.
Clay Christensen, a professor at Harvard Business School, said, “Questions are places in your mind where answers fit. If you haven’t asked the question, the answer has nowhere to go. It hits your mind and bounces right off. You have to ask the question—you have to want to know—in order to open up the space for the answer to fit.”
There is no necessary correlation between knowing and doing. There should be. But there isn’t. Knowing the questions to ask and actually pausing to ask them are two completely different things.
Developing the discipline to pause and ask these five questions will result in better decisions and fewer regrets:
- The Integrity Question: Am I being honest with myself . . . really?
- The Legacy Question: What story do I want to tell?
- The Conscience Question: Is there a tension that deserves my attention?
- The Maturity Question: What is the wise thing to do?
- The Relationship Question: What does love require of me?
More Than a Decision
Your decisions . . . along with your responses to other people’s decisions, which are also your decisions . . . are about the only thing you can control in life, which means your decisions are how you control your life. Decisions are your steering wheel. Your joystick. Your keypad. Which means . . . and this is big: Your decisions determine your story.
Our decisions are heavily influenced by our emotions and our appetites. Research suggests we aren’t able to make decisions apart from our emotions. Experience confirms our appetites often overrule our intelligence. Otherwise nobody would have to remind us to exercise and eat right.
As soon as you start selling you on anything, you should hit pause. Here’s why. We rarely have to sell ourselves on a good idea.
Your legacy, your mark, your fingerprints on the future are determined by the decisions you make.
Question #1: The Integrity Question: Am I Being Honest with Myself . . . Really?
Exceptional self-leadership, not authority, is the key to sustained influence. Great leaders last because they lead themselves first. But here’s the challenge. You can’t lead yourself if you’re lying to yourself.
Author and professor Erin Brown defines a false narrative as a “Plastic Truth.” She writes, “What we’ve said so many times in our heads becomes our Plastic Truth. Over time, these fake parts of the story—the pieces we’ve made up—actually cement into the gaps between Truth. False narratives become a crutch. We tell ourselves internal stories to avoid facing mistakes…”
Rigorous honesty is the first rule of recovery. They would tell you that dishonesty fuels addictions of all kinds.
And what do “Plastic Truth” and false narratives have to do with decision-making? A false premise will result in a faulty decision. You can’t make the best decision for you until you are honest with you.
When it comes to selling ourselves on bad ideas or bad decisions, we’re the best. When it comes to convincing ourselves to do the wrong thing, we’re experts.
The 3 D’s
Three categories of decisions that create the majority of regrets:
- Dumb Purchases
- Doomed Relationships
- Destructive Habits
You rarely have to sell yourself on a good idea. You rarely have to sell yourself on the right thing to do, the healthy thing to do, the responsible thing to do. You just know.
You rarely have to justify a good idea. Justifying is akin to just-a-lying. You’re just-a-lying to yourself.
Most of us want to be proven right more than we want to know what’s true. We aren’t on truth quests. We’re on confirmation quests.
Greek historian Thucydides, as far back as the fourth century BC, observed: “…for it is a habit of mankind to entrust to careless hope what they long for, and to use sovereign reason to thrust aside what they do not fancy.”
Echoing the prophet Jeremiah, Brené Brown insists, “Our rational, grown-up selves are good liars.”
Be curious. Curiosity will keep you focused on the frontiers of your ignorance. That’s where we learn. That’s where we gain insight. It’s where we catch sight of our prejudice and our narrow-mindedness.
Be a student, not a critic. Critics look for reasons not to learn from what they don’t understand. Students, on the other hand, are always learning. They face their ignorance. They are curious.
Decision #1: The Integrity Decision – I will not lie to myself even when the truth makes me feel bad about myself.
Jeremiah was right: “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.” But now you know. And now you know what to do about it.
Question #2: The Legacy Question: What Story Do I Want to Tell?
Every decision you make becomes a permanent part of your story. The story of your life. What story do you want to tell?
Our private decisions don’t remain private. Our personal decisions impact other persons. Once our story becomes their story, it is their story to tell.
The primary reason we don’t think in terms of story when making decisions is that story is later. Decisions are now.
In the Bible’s story of Joseph, the author assures us: “the LORD was with [Joseph].” Which is a bit strange. If the Lord was with Joseph, it would seem the Lord would have kept all this from happening to Joseph in the first place. Isn’t that what the Lord does? If the Lord was with Joseph, he would’ve been home with his dad and his dad’s favorite wife while his murderous brothers were serving time in Egypt. Right? If the Lord was with Joseph, Potiphar’s scheming, no-good wife would have been tossed out, and Joseph would have been rewarded for his integrity. Don’t good things come to good people? Everything about this seems wrong. But Joseph’s story wasn’t over.
You may know how Joseph’s story turned out, but he didn’t. For all he knew, prison was all he would ever know. Yet somehow, decision by decision, he just kept writing his story. A good story.
What Joseph said next is one of my favorite parts of his story. What he said next reminds us that he was human. Sure, God was with him, but he was ready for God to be with him somewhere else! Joseph was making the best decisions possible under the circumstances. But he was neither happy nor content with the circumstances.
What follows are perhaps the saddest eleven words in the English version of the Hebrew Bible. The author writes, “The chief cupbearer, however, did not remember Joseph; he forgot him.” It’s hard to decide a good story when you’ve been forgotten, isn’t it? When it feels like nothing we do matters, it’s difficult to be concerned about what we do. When we couldn’t care less because nobody else cares, we get careless. We make bad decisions. We create regret. Regret never makes for a good story.
When Joseph ultimately translated Pharaoh’s dream, how did Pharoah respond? The plan seemed good to Pharaoh and to all his officials. So Pharaoh asked them, “Can we find anyone like this man, one in whom is the spirit of God?” Pharaoh saw in Joseph a man he could trust. Potiphar would vouch for him. The prison warden would vouch for him. The cupbearer had already vouched for him. His reputation was spotless. His track record was impeccable. He had nothing to hide. Nothing to be ashamed of. Before the day was over, Pharaoh appointed Joseph as prime minister of Egypt. His primary responsibility was to store enough grain to sustain the nation through the coming famine.
For thirteen unimaginably long and difficult years, Joseph had been writing his story one decision at a time—a story that paved the way for him to become the second most powerful person in the nation that represented the superpower of that day . . . Egypt.
With his new title and responsibility, Joseph did what Joseph always did. His best.
Unpleasant circumstances create unprecedented, eye-popping, attention-getting, decision-making opportunities. When you decide what everybody expects you to decide . . . what they would decide if they were you . . . nobody notices. But when you decide against the norm, the tide, human nature, your story stands out.
Joseph lived as if God was present. So in addition to rescuing the nation from a devastating famine, Joseph rescued his brothers and their families. He moved them all to Egypt, where they settled permanently as guests and relatives of the prime minister. Good decision. Good story. That’s why we’re still telling it.
Decision #2: The Legacy Decision – I will decide a story I’m proud to tell. I will not decide anything that makes me a liar for life.
Question #3: The Conscience Question: Is There a Tension That Deserves My Attention?
Consider a red flag moment, an internal sense of “I’m not sure why, but something about this doesn’t feel right.” When that happens, you owe it to yourself to pause and pay attention to the tension. Don’t ignore it. Don’t brush it off. Pause and ask yourself, “What about this bothers me?”
Emotions play an important role in good decision-making. As Paul Naeger reminds us in his excellent article “Red Flag Decision Making,” emotions serve a purpose, informing us what to do. If our brain comes across something and categorizes it as a “red flag,” we will be notified through thoughts and feelings created by emotion. This “red flag” alerts us to pay attention. Our emotions act as a cueing system notifying us to pay attention and take action.
Others can help us identify red flags:
(1) Pay attention to your Momma;
(2) “Friends don’t let friends…”
The problem with someone else bringing things to our attention is that it creates relational tension. And that’s a tension you should pay attention to as well. Why? Because we have a tendency to discount truth by discounting the truth bearer.
It’s called the genetic fallacy or the fallacy of origins. We fall prey to this fallacy when we discount information based on the source rather than the merits of the information. So pay attention to the tension regardless of the source.
If something bothers you, let it bother you. What begins as an uneasy feeling is often supported later with reason. Information. Insight. But if you don’t pause, you won’t see it.
One of the reasons we ignore the tension when we are making decisions . . . one reason we push through and ignore the advice of other people or the voice of our conscience is: We believe we can predict outcomes. Don’t we? We think we know. But we don’t know.
Just a few feet away from Saul, it occurs to David: Just because I kill the king doesn’t mean I will necessarily become king. But one thing is for certain . . . I will be the man who killed the king! That will be my legacy. That will be the story I’ll be forced to tell my children and grandchildren. “Grandpa David, tell us one more time about how you became king. You know, how you snuck up behind King Saul while he was using the potty and slit his throat!” The author tells us David was conscience-stricken. His conscience bothered him for even considering the deed he almost carried out. This is how we know he was paying attention to the tension. He was paying attention to his conscience.
Instead of murdering Saul, he creeps up behind him and cuts off a corner of his discarded robe. Then he makes his way back to his hiding place where his men are staring in utter disbelief.
David had some explaining to do. He said to his men, “The LORD forbid that I should do such a thing to my master, the LORD’s anointed . . .”
The text says David bowed down to Saul from the mouth of the cave. Then he stands to his feet, holds up the corner of Saul’s garment and announces to all present that he could have easily murdered the king but chose not to. For all who were gathered that day, one thing was clear: David was the better man. He spared Saul’s life when Saul would have taken his. After a short speech, David concludes with this powerful, powerful statement—a statement that we should all take to heart: “May the LORD judge between you and me . . .” In other words, “Saul, I’m going to do the right thing. The just thing. I will wait and allow God to determine the outcome of this conflict. While this may be the worst political, military, and leadership decision I’ve ever made, while I realize I may have just forfeited my life by allowing you to walk out of here alive, I will not take matters into my own hands. God made you king. I will not replace what God put in place. I’ll leave that to God. I will not play God in your life or mine. He continued: “. . . may the LORD avenge the wrongs you have done to me, but my hand will not touch you.”
That internal hesitation, that red flag, is often God’s way of turning us in another direction. People yielded to God don’t attempt to play God. They don’t predict outcomes. Instead, they surrender. They obey. They follow.
As the author’s dad (Charles Stanley) is fond of saying: “God takes full responsibility for the life wholly yielded to him.”
Decision #3: The Conscience Decision – I will pause even when I can’t pin-point the cause of my hesitation. I will explore, rather than ignore my conscience.
Is there a tension that deserves your attention? If so, pay attention to that tension. That’s a decision you will never regret.
Question #4: The Maturity Question: What Is the Wise Thing to Do?
Whether it’s curfew, diet, driving, or spending . . . our natural inclination is to live as close to the line as possible. What line? The line between legal and illegal. The line between responsible and irresponsible. The line between moral-ish and immoral. Ethical and unethical. The line between “I’m still in control” and “I need help.” It’s human nature to snuggle up to the edge of irresponsibility, disaster, or embarrassment and stay there as long as possible.
So what is this unexamined assumption that makes us comfortable living, dating, spending, eating, drinking, driving, and flirting so close to the edge of embarrassment or worse? For the sake of clarity and emphasis, I’ll state this unexamined and oh-so-flawed assumption four ways: If it’s not wrong, it’s alright. If it’s not illegal, it’s permissible. If it’s not immoral, it’s acceptable. If it’s not over the line, it’s fine.
Nobody is doing anything wrong until they are. Drawing our lines, setting our limits, establishing our moral and ethical standards on the borderline between right and wrong, legal and illegal, healthy and unhealthy eliminates any margin for error. It’s a foolish and dangerous way to live.
An option can be both not wrong and unwise at the same time. And that brings us to our fourth question. The maturity question. What is the wise thing to do?
Because there isn’t a “Thou shalt not” attached to it doesn’t necessarily mean “Thou shalt.” It’s foolish to live on the border of what’s permissible, legal, acceptable, not prosecutable.
The apostle Paul, in a letter to Christians living in Ephesus, writes: Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil.
Be very careful how you live. To state it in the negative, Don’t be careless how you live. Then he leverages our word: Not as unwise, but as wise. With those six words, Paul discloses the criterion by which he and we are to weigh our options.
Paul follows up with a bit of explanation and motivation: . . . making the most of every opportunity, Literally, redeeming or ransoming the time.
The challenge with the wisdom question is that it forces us to face up to the very thing or things we are trying to ignore.
Paul continued with these words: Therefore do not be foolish . . . If punctuation had been available in the first century, this phrase may have come with double exclamation marks.
From there he commands readers to do something that appears to be impossible. . . . but understand what the Lord’s will is.
Like the undertow in Naples, culture has a way of slowly and subtly edging us beyond healthy moral, ethical, financial, and professional limits. Then one day we look up and wonder who moved the camper! Our actual response is more along the lines of, “How did I get myself into this situation?” When everything and everybody is drifting along at the same rate in the same direction, it’s easy to be lulled into believing you’re standing still. Without a stationary reference point, it’s impossible to ascertain where you are, where you aren’t, and where you ought to be.
In light of my past experience, my current circumstances, and my future hopes and dreams, what is the wise thing for me to do?
On a personal level, that axiom could be restated this way: “Those who don’t pay attention to what got ’em into trouble yesterday are liable to end up in the same trouble tomorrow.”
YOUR FUTURE HOPES AND DREAMS
Every year or so, Stanley asks the people in his organization the following question: What breaks your heart?
Stanley explains, “What breaks my heart is watching people make decisions that undermine their hopes and dreams. Bottom line, it breaks my heart to watch people engineer their own unhappiness.”
You have a mental picture of your preferred future—what could be and should be—how you envision the next season or two to play out. It may be general. It may be specific. You may have gone to the trouble of writing it down. You may not have a plan for getting there, but you have a general sense of where there is.
So clear we are tempted to look away, to retreat to the excuses with which we’ve buttressed our less-than-wise decisions for years: I’m not doing anything wrong. People do this all the time. I’m not hurting anyone. I can handle it. There’s no law against it. God will forgive me.
Our excuses are persuasive because they’re mostly true. You aren’t doing anything wrong. It is commonplace. You can handle it, initially. It isn’t illegal. God will forgive you. But so what?
The purpose of our fourth question isn’t to stop you from doing something wrong. It’s to keep you from doing something unwise. Unwise is the gateway to regret. It paves the way to the tipping point—the point of no return. Anna Nalick nailed it when she penned these lyrics: Life’s like an hourglass, glued to the table No one can find the rewind button girl . . .
Decision #4: The Maturity Decision – I will do the wise thing.
If you never stop long enough to decide ahead of time where you want to be, you will live your life unaware of the sacrifices necessary to get there. Everybody ends up somewhere in life. Stanley recommends you end up somewhere on purpose. Wisdom paves the way.
Don’t settle for good, legal, permissible, acceptable, tolerable, not prosecutable, or normal. If you do, you will eventually find yourself living dangerously close to regret.
Question #5: The Relationship Question: What Does Love Require of Me?
Stanley’s mentor Regi Campbell used to ask: “Andy, what do you hope I don’t ask you about?”
You don’t have to do anything with your answer. But you owe it to yourself to know…admit…acknowledge…the answer. What you won’t know can hurt you.
Our final question isn’t about making your life better. It’s about making someone else’s life better, which may make your life better. But it may not.
THE OTHER RULE
Every major world religion includes some form of the famous equation. Matthew’s Gospel records Jesus’s version: So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.
Jesus had reduced their entire list to two: love God and love your neighbor. He continued: A new command I give you, love one another…
What came next trumped the Golden Rule. It’s also known as the platinum rule (see my summary of the book by that title here).
Jesus said, “As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” His primary concern was not that they believe something. He insisted they do something. They were to love as he had loved.
The litmus test for being a bona fide Jesus follower was not the ritualistic, day-of-the-week, festival-driven, don’t-forget-your-goat worship of an invisible and somewhat distant God. Following Jesus would not be about looking for ways to get closer to God who dwelled out there, up there, somewhere. Jesus followers would demonstrate their devotion to God by putting the person next to them in front of them.
Jesus leveraged his example—how he loved. Jesus’s love for the men in the room, rather than his authority over the men in the room, is what he leveraged to instruct and inspire the men in the room.
If you are a Christian, that should stop you in your tracks. A few years later, it would stop Paul in his: In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; Jesus never played the God card…rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— But not just any death—a death no mere mortal would willingly subject themselves to…even death on a cross!
Jesus leveraged selfless love to compel his followers to love. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.
What does love require of me? This question gives voice to God’s will for us on issues where the Bible, as well as all other religious literature, is silent. It fills the gaps with disquieting precision.
When presenting this concept publicly, Stanley often asks his audience to commit the following to memory: When unsure of what to say or do, ask what love requires of you.
When it comes to relationships, God will always nudge us in the direction of kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. When in doubt, max those out. But that’s the abridged list.
What does love require of us?
Decision #5: The Relationship Decision – I will decide with the interests of others in mind.
So while we may not always be sure what to believe, and while our views on a variety of things continue to mature and change, we almost always know what love requires of us.
Conclusion
Stanley explains, “I began asking God to show me his will regarding friends, girlfriends, jobs, college major, summer opportunities. Pretty much everything. And I’m glad I did. This simple habit kept me looking up and looking ahead. It provided me with a sense of destiny. If God had a will or plan for my life, I certainly didn’t want to miss it. If God had a plan for my life, what could possibly be more important?”
Nothing is more fulfilling. There is no peace like the peace that comes with knowing you are in sync with God’s will for your life.
Generally speaking, it is God’s will that everyone be honest with themselves…really. It’s God’s will that we all pay attention to anything that dings our consciences. It’s God’s will for each of us to take into account our past experiences, current circumstances, and future hopes and dreams. It’s God’s will that we understand what love requires of us. So each of our five questions points us in the direction of God’s general will for our lives. His general will is directional. In most instances, it’s all the direction we need.
The apostle Paul said as much two thousand years ago in his famous letter to Christians living in Rome. He writes: I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Translated: Submit yourself to God; it’s the logical thing to do.
What follows is the most familiar part and perhaps the most instructive part as well: Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
All five of our questions fit neatly in the renew your mind bucket. All five stand in sharp contrast to the pattern of this world.
Good questions lead to better decisions. Your decisions determine the direction and quality of your life.
While there’s nothing you can do about the decisions you’d choose to go back and unmake, remember this: Your regrets are only part of your story. They don’t have to be the story. Your past should remind you. It doesn’t have to define you.
Write a story you are proud to tell—a story distinguished by better decisions, fewer regrets.