How To Wake Up Not Blaming Yourself For Bad Decisions

Life is a game of Three-card Monte.

You know it’s tourist season in New York when guys set up cardboard boxes on the sidewalk. The sales patter starts, inviting people to pick the Ace of Hearts out of the three aces being shuffled around. Soon a crowd builds. Inevitably someone will plunk down cash and confidently pick the wrong card, again and again.

I’m not saying you’re being conned by life.

What I am saying is that we agree to thousands of deals in our lives, both big (I do X job, you pay me Y) and small (I’ll take out the garbage, you deal with the cat litter).

Deals are constantly being reshuffled, because the world changes, circumstances change, and people change. It’s not that people are deliberately out to con you, but the terms of the deal become imbalanced.

You will lose more than just cash if your agreements get shuffled, and you don’t see the swap happen. You will lose energy and self-esteem.

Whenever you enter into a deal, even one not worthy of a legal contract (maybe especially those since we’re not as rigorous with informal arrangements) be clear about what you’re agreeing to.

And when there is a change, revisit the deal. If the garbage is being taken out but the cat litter is all over the bathroom floor, you need to either enforce the terms or renegotiate. 

It’s not personal. It’s just math. When A does not equal B anymore you need to change things up so that they do. If you do this on all of your agreements, big and small, you’ll never wake up one day surprised and unhappy, blaming yourself for making bad decisions.

Don’t be the victim in life’s Three-card Monte con.

Photo credit: W. Duke, Sons & Co., CC0, via Wikimedia Commons