30 % of all decisions you make will be wrong. Like it or not your life is not going to be a story of perfect decision making. You will make the wrong investments. Choose the wrong course at university. Get into the wrong company. Hire the wrong people. Choose the wrong life partner.
The question is not if you will make the wrong decision – but rather, what do you do once you have figured out you have made the wrong decision. Tiger Woods hits shots that land in the rough once in a while – but what he has over most of the novice golfers is that he doesn’t hang his head thinking about what he did wrong and focusing on his previous poor shot. He figures out how to get himself out of the rough and onto the green.
No golfer has ever gone a lifetime without hitting a ball into the rough. No businessperson has had a career full of only the “right” decisions. No relationship has gone a lifetime when one of the people wasn’t “wrong”.
The trick is to keep your confidence in decision making. To make more of them. To know that if you do ever make the wrong decision you have the ability to correct yourself further down the line. The unsuccessful people get paralyzed knowing that a shot they make take might land them in the rough. The successful people are those that manage to take the most shots, knowing that if they are ever wrong they can always put themselves back onto the green.