A new beginning

Learn to love yourself and your life would be much rewarding! Here is a painting as a visual treat. 

Asher B. Durand, Landscape, 1850

When I began writing this blog, I wanted to share the beautiful paintings and poems that I like, some thoughtful questions as I attempt to sift through my ideas and frame my opinions and paint a view of perception, some of my drawings, sketches and paintings. I have been remiss these past years with my posts. 

I am now starting to focus on a different direction for my online journal. Recently, I studied and tried to understand why we do the things we do, why certain things affect us so much while we could be least bothered about the rest, what makes us act a certain way, assimilate certain set of choices and the reasons behind the decisions we make. As I learn, I hope to journal my understanding of these subjects and share this knowledge. 

Everything we do starts with a decision. A thought arises in our mind. We either choose to act on it or not. Thus we have thought and action. A thought is merely an intent, There can be thoughts that do not result in action. There can be actions without thinking. Once we act and commit an irrevocable allocation of resources, we have made a decision. 

There are several thoughts in our mind. Not all result in action, however several thoughts impact and influence our decision. Some decisions are good and some are bad. How do we decide which ones are good and which ones are bad? Some decisions have excellent outcomes and some not so much. Are those decisions that have good outcome good and those that have bad outcomes bad? Are the results solely based on the decision and are we the ones who are 100% responsible for our decision? Is a decision good because it had the expected outcome? Can we always predict the outcomes?

Whether a decision is good or bad does not depend on the outcome. Nor are we 100% responsible for all our decisions. An actionable thought and thoughtful action would possibly contribute to a better decision. However, there are several factors that influence a decision. We, the decider, the way we frame the question of our decision, the choices we have or the alternatives, our values that have been formed, the information we had at the time of making the decision and the reasoning that was applied (or not applied) contribute and impact the quality of the decision. All these aspects have their own blind spots, biases, perspectives and we may not be aware of many of them. 

Hence, there is no good beating yourself up for any decision. The best we can do is accept that we made a decision, the outcomes were either good or bad, understand the learnings and use it while making future decisions.