“If you could see your whole life from the start to finish, would you change things?”

I recently watched Arrival again, and this is the question Louise Banks (Amy Adams), the main protagonist of the movie, asks of her (about to be) lover Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner). We infer that Louise chose NOT to change anything, even though she knew there will be pain, loss, and grief along the way. She chose the pain, because she knew that her choice also brought immeasurable happiness, love, and laughter.

But what about if the outcome is only pain and no joy? Should we change our choice? At first glance, yes. But structuring our decisions in a way that means things could never go wrong means not only never to take any risks, it also means that we could never learn anything, never try anything new, and therefore never GROW.

 If we understand Decision Making in this way, we can free ourselves from the burden of defining our ability to make choices by the quality of the outcomes we achieve, and instead see that mistakes are simply feedback for our learning.