Making good decisions is an essential life skill you will never learn as a JW. The organisation simply cannot have its members making decisions for themselves all over the place and not involving them. That would be chaos, and they need to control it, so they keep members infantalised and dependent on them to guide them in every aspect of their lives. Scriptures like Jeremiah 10:23 that state ‘it does not belong to man who is walking even to direct his own step’, are regularly trotted out to remind members not to trust their own abilities or reasoning, but to rely on God (aka the organisation).

As a result, you never learn to make your own decisions. If a big life decision comes up, you may look up related Watchtower resources, then consult Elder so-and-so, and possibly discuss it with Sister what’s-her-name, and you will probably pray about it, but in the end, if you have trained your ‘bible-based conscience’ well enough, you will take the option that you know God/the organisation wants.

In the JW world, pleasing the organisation is the same thing as pleasing God. This means that every decision you make, no matter how big or small, will be based on what you believe God wants as dictated by the organisation, and how much dissonance you can tolerate between what you ‘should’ do, and what you actually do.  

So what do you do when all that is gone? How do you learn to make good decisions for yourself when all of those other considerations are stripped away? Where do you even start?

Why decisions can be difficult

Let’s start with why some decisions can be so damn difficult. Aside from a JW-induced lack of skill in this area, difficult decisions tend to have more than one factor at play, and if any various factors conflict with each other, it can feel almost impossible to make a good decision (or at the very least, a decision you can live with).

Here are some factors that can affect your ability to make good decisions:

Lack of critical thinking skills: If you are struggling with critical thinking, you may be unable to effectively weigh up evidence for yourself. You may then just go with what someone else recommends without fully understanding the implications for you and your situation. It could also be that you have reasonably well-developed critical thinking skills, but in a highly stressful and emotional situation, your critical thinking is subdued and you make a bad decision.  

You may be unsure of yourself and what you want: If you don’t know who you are and what you want, making good decisions will be much harder.

Unclear outcomes: While no one can know the outcome of a decision before it has been made, some outcomes are more predictable than others. Outcomes for smaller everyday decisions are generally quite predictable and the consequence is insignificant if you get it wrong. But this is generally not the case with larger life decisions. These are decisions with unpredictable outcomes and potentially significant consequences if you made a bad choice, which can hold you back from making a decision.

Impacts on other people: It is often not just you who will be affected by any decisions you make. Depending on the decision and your situation, your family, spouses, children, even friends and co-workers, may all be affected in some way. While you are not responsible for their reactions, sometimes you will need to factor in any impacts on others which can complicate your options.

Financial implications: Sometimes the financial implication of a decision will clearly rule it out, but sometimes it is less clear cut. Knowing just how much your finances will be affected in advance can be impossible with some decisions, ie. starting a business.

Potential burden of decision: Sometimes your decision may involve a lot of work and personal sacrifice, ie. starting a relationship or business, buying a home, having children, going back to full-time study, even adopting a pet. You simply can’t know in advance what will happen, how much personal sacrifice this will require, and how you will handle this additional burden in your life.

Heart says one thing, head says another: Sometimes decisions cause conflicts between your feelings and emotions on one hand, versus your actual needs and hard-core logic on the other.

Insufficient information to inform decision: Sometimes you just don’t have enough information to feel comfortable making a decision.

 

Top ten tips on making good decisions in your post-JW life

Let’s now take a look at some skills and strategies you can use to help you in your decision making.

Just to clarify, when I say ‘good decisions’, I’m referring to the best decision for you and your situation. The ‘most right’ (or even ‘least-worst’) decision. No one is perfect and life is unpredictable, so you can only do your best to make decisions that you can live with. Decisions that bring you closer to the life you want:

1. Get to know yourself

As a JW, your identity is suppressed. The organisation comes first and your own wants, needs, and personality all need to be put aside. After you leave, the basis for your entire existence has now changed, and you may have no idea who you actually are as a person outside of the organisation. What do you like? What do you dislike? What is important to you? What are your values?

Take some time to get to know yourself (see earlier post: Recovery Priority #1: Getting to know yourself). Allow yourself the time and don’t feel that it is self-indulgent. If you don’t know yourself and who you are, you will never be able to make decisions that best fit you and what you want for your life. You risk flitting from one thing to the next, making bad decisions and being perpetually unhappy, because you simply don’t even know who you are, let alone what you want.

2. Identify what you want

After you have some idea of who you are, your values, and what you like and dislike, take some time to work out what you want in your life. As JWs we are not allowed to pursue what we want, or even try to work it out. Our lives were very sheltered, so expose yourself to a bunch of new viewpoints, opinions, experiences, and ideas, then, do some free-writing to work out what you want for a career, as a hobby, or in life generally. Jot down all the options available to you and see what resonates.

Can you see a new career path opening up? New hobbies? A different lifestyle? Once you know what you want, the steps to get there and the decisions you need to make will become clearer.

While this can seem high–level, having an idea of what you want for your life will help guide you in smaller decisions. When something comes up that feels conflicting, choose the path that takes you closer to the life you want, not further away from it.

3. Gather all the information you need (including talking to others)

Now that you are not a JW, so much more information is available to you to help inform a difficult decision. You can look at information from a variety of sources and not be concerned that someone will frown on you because it is not a jw.org resource.

Information is all too available now and the issue you have will be limiting it to that which is relevant and helpful. There are many biased sources out there, so be sure to think about where that information is coming from before you take it on-board. Research all the factors at play in your decision, financial impacts, possible time commitment, likelihood of success,  etc., and weigh it up with your own personal priorities.

Find out how similar situations affected others. Talk to people with first-hand experience, but always remember that they are not you. Use their experience to inform your decision, but not dictate it.

4. Consider any inter-related factors and impacts – use a pros and cons list

Sometimes a benefit also has an associated negative, and it can be incredibly confusing to have this all rattling around in your head. Writing it down in a list of pros and cons can help you identify where there are conflicts and overlaps, and how your decision might be good in one way but disastrous in another.

5. Consider all possibilities and outcomes

A particular decision can result in several different outcomes and not all of them may be obvious. Try to put yourself in the situation as if you have made the decision, or taken a particular option, then follow it through to all possible outcomes, good or bad. While you can’t know in advance which way yours will go, knowing all possibilities will prepare you to make your decision. If there is an outcome you know you could not live with, this may help you know which way to go. It can also help you identify other options.

When potential outcomes are unclear, it can also be helpful to identify the outcome you actually want. Once you know this, it is easier to work out the steps to make that happen, and to avoid what you don’t want from happening.

6. Identify what you can compromise on and what you can’t

The ‘opportunity cost’ principle can help here. This involves identifying what you are willing to give up to do or achieve a certain thing, and it often comes down to time, money, or other experiences.

For example, if you choose to be with one person over another, the ‘opportunity cost’ of that decision is the life and experiences you may have had with someone else. If you choose to get a degree, the ‘opportunity cost’ of higher education is the full-time wage you would normally earn for those years.

This also applies to small everyday things and how you spend your time in general, ie. if you choose to get your housework done, this comes at the ‘opportunity cost’ of other things you may prefer to be doing, ie. playing video games or anything else which is more rewarding to you.

What are you willing to give up to get what you want?

7. Consider your feelings and emotions, as well as logic

Sometimes it is easy to ignore emotion and go with logic, but in my experience, the decisions where I ignored my gut feeling are the ones I regret the most. Listen to what your gut is saying, and if it conflicts with logic, consider whether the logic is enough to out-weigh it, and whether you can live with that.

If you are torn, I recommend something I call ‘the over-night test’. This is where you make the decision one way, sleep on it, and then assess how you feel when you wake up the next day. Does it sit right? Does it ‘feel’ right? Or did you wake up feeling uneasy? Then make it the other way and see how you feel.

It can even help to do this for a few days in a row to really know for sure whether something is right for you.

8. Don’t fall for the ‘sunk cost fallacy’. Ignore sunk costs!! Move on!!

The ‘sunk cost fallacy’ is when you stick with something far longer than you should, simply because you have already sunk time, effort, and resources into it. If something is no longer serving you, let it go. There is nothing to be gained by hanging on to it just because of time, effort, and resources that you will never get back anyway. This kind of thinking is what gets people trapped in cults. Forget about what you have lost and focus on what you will gain by letting it go.

9. Take your time, don’t rush

While you may not have the luxury of time in all decisions, where possible, take your time with it. Don’t let anyone pressure you into making a decision before you are ready. They aren’t the ones who will have to live with the consequences. You are.

10. ‘If in doubt: Dont‘

If you are unsure about something, the safest thing is not to do it.

This old saying has saved me from many a bad decision, from small things like buying something I didn’t really need, to big ones like taking a job I wasn’t sure of. It is generally easier to live with the consequences of deciding against something you weren’t sure of, than going ahead with it and regretting it later because you knew you weren’t sure at the time but did it anyway.

Learning to be ok with uncertainty

As JWs, our future was certain. As long as we followed a specific set of rules and gave control over our lives to an organisation, then we had a guarantee that a specific outcome in the future would happen. All the rest in between was irrelevant. Just make it through until then, and after then, you will have everything you could want. No decisions even required!

Now though, everything is different. You are finally allowed to care about your life now, to make decisions for yourself now, in this system, regardless of what may happen in the future or whatever you believe may happen after death.

This means learning to be ok with uncertainty. No matter what you do, no matter how much planning and how much stressing you do, you can’t know the outcome until you have made the decision. No one can. And that is ok!

Just do your due diligence beforehand through methods like the ten strategies above, and at the very least you will have the peace of mind that whatever happens, you did your best to make the most appropriate decision for you. This will make it easier to handle any unforeseen outcomes or burdens that arise as a result.

Everything is different now!

After you leave, the basis for all of your decisions will change: You no longer need to make decisions based on what will please God (or the JW version of God); You no longer need to make decisions based on how much you may or may not upset other JWs, because, well, if they are JWs, they likely aren’t in your life anymore; and you no longer need to go against your own inner compass to please an organisation that only wants to exploit you. Quite simply, you no longer need to live a certain way just to please others.

This is something we never knew we could have: Autonomy over our own life and decisions.

While this can be overwhelming, it is also exciting. Finally, you get to make decisions for yourself. You will get it wrong sometimes and you will need to deal with any consequences, but you will learn from it, and through it, you will learn about yourself and most likely make a better choice next time. And if you don’t, it just means there was something more for you to learn.

Every decision comes with unexplored options, paths you can’t travel, because no one can do everything! But if you know who you are and what you want for your life, it is easier to make decisions that take you closer to the life you want. It also makes it easier to say ‘no’ to things you don’t want, and not regret it.  

This whole ‘decision-making-autonomy-over-our-own-lives-thing’ is a very new journey for most of us, so don’t be too hard on yourself. Take your time, learn everything you can along the way, and relish the chance you now have to live your own life. You have gone through so much to have this freedom, so enjoy it as much as you possibly can.

Until next time,

Renee