Is it a mistake or a bad decision?

Have you ever made a mistake?  I have.  Several.  What do you think the difference is between a mistake and a bad decision?  I'll tell you what I think.  A mistake is something that you do, regret and get over.  A bad decision is something that you do, don't get over and beat yourself up about or mourn for a long time.  Can you think of mistake you made a while ago, several weeks, months or years, and still feel bad about?  Now is the time to let it go.  It's over and the best thing about the past is that it's over! The best thing you can do is apologise, forgive yourself and move on.

Some people make mistakes that become very bad decisions.  Have you ever met someone who hates their job and wishes they had followed their dream instead?  Perhaps they studied art at University but took a job in the corporate world, have stayed in the job for years and now feel incapable to make the change.  That is a very bad decision that started life as a mistake.

Planning a wedding will require you to make a lot of decisions...some as simple as what kind of icing you want on your wedding cake and some as complicated as who sits next to who at the wedding breakfast.  Now is a good time to accept that you will make a couple mistakes and that's OK as long as you don't let it eat away at you, absorb too much of your time and energy, and continue to feel bad about it for days, weeks and months to come!

I have a simple solution to avoid making mistakes in the first place.  Think of a making a decision about something simple right now.  You will get a good feeling somewhere inside your body like your stomach or your chest or your throat.  You will also get an uncomfortable feeling in another part of your body which is telling you that it's not a good decision and you shouldn't do it.  The problem is that we frequently ignore these internal messages and make the wrong decision.  Have you ever played a game of Trivial Pursuit or taken part in a quiz and not given the first answer that came into your head?  You then find out that the answer you gave was wrong and the one you were going to say was right but you doubted yourself and didn't trust the first answer. That's exactly what I'm talking about.

So, the next time you have to make a decision, no matter how simple, go inside and acknowledge where you get a good or bad feeling about the decision.  Trust whichever one you feel first and base your decision on that and you will the right decision every time.  And if you don't, it's not the end of the world.  Apologise, forgive yourself and move on.