Accurate understanding of any situation plays an important role in making timely decisions. Usually, when we see an opportunity or situation, we form an impression in our mind about it, which guides us in making decisions. However, often later events prove that our point of view was not right.
Stephen Covey narrated an incident in his best-selling book ‘Seven Habits of Highly Effective People’ stating, “Once I visited a restaurant for dinner. Meanwhile, a man entered the restaurant with two children aged 3 to 4 years. His children start doing mischief in the restaurant and were misbehaving with every incoming customer.”
“I was really disturbed and worried that their father was sitting contentedly and his kids were misbehaving all over the restaurant. After a short while, one of the children came to my table and picked up a fork and signaled to hit me.”
The author further wrote, “I got up in a rage and told their father that I had never seen such a stupid, insensitive and foolish person as you.” Covey wrote that when I vented my anger on this man, he stood up from his chair and said very politely, “I apologize to you first and all the customers present here.”
According to the author, the man told him that their mother and I were separated after the children were born. “Yesterday, I got a call from a hospital that your ex-wife had been diagnosed with stage four cancer. When I reached the hospital in the morning, doctors told me that she had died.”
“I don’t know how to take care of these children and now that their mother has passed away I don’t have the courage to tell them,” the man told Covey. Here the author wrote that his feelings for the children changed.
Accurate understanding of the situation is very important in both professional and personal life. If we make a decision without fully understanding and knowing the situation, then that decision may be detrimental to us.
We usually look at life according to our values, our mindset, our beliefs, and convictions, and what happens is that our ideas prevent us from making an impartial decision. Successful decision making is only possible when we realize the situation properly and make an impartial decision.
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