Bad Decision or Bad Outcome? How to Tell the Difference
Life coach and mentor for more than twenty years.
Part 3 of the Trusting Yourself series. New here? Start with Part 1.
When something goes wrong, most of us ask the same question afterward: Was that my fault? And most of us answer it unfairly. We judge the choice by how it turned out, not by what we knew when we made it.
Here's how to answer it fairly:
- Know that your brain rewrites the past. After something goes wrong, the warning signs look obvious. At the time, they usually weren't.
- Sort what you knew from what you learned later. Only the first part counts when you judge the decision.
- If it really was a bad call, deal with it and let it be finished. Own it without shame, repair what you can, keep one lesson, and move on.
Why your brain rewrites the past
Once you know how something ended, your brain can't un-know it. It goes back over the story and lines everything up so the ending looks like it was coming the whole time. The small doubt you brushed off becomes a "red flag." The thing you couldn't have known becomes something you "should have seen."
Researchers call this hindsight bias, the "I knew it all along" feeling. There's a close cousin too, sometimes called outcome bias: judging a decision as good or bad mostly by how it turned out. If it worked out, you were smart. If it didn't, you were foolish. Even when the decision itself was the same.
Your brain isn't doing this to hurt you. It's trying to learn, so the same thing doesn't happen again. But it learns the wrong lesson when it treats every bad result as proof that you can't be trusted.
If you read Part 2, on trusting yourself after betrayal, this will sound familiar. It's the same thing that happens when you replay a betrayal and find all the signs you "missed." Afterward there are always signs.
A fair look back
In Part 1, I shared three questions for an old decision you still hold against yourself: What did I actually know at the time? What could I actually control? Given those answers, was the decision unreasonable?
Here's a simple tool to go with them. Take a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle.
- On the left, write what you knew at the time. What you saw, what you'd been told, what options you had, how much time you had, what you'd been taught (or never taught).
- On the right, write what you only learned afterward. How it turned out. What someone was hiding. What changed after you decided.
Now judge the decision using only the left side. The right side is real, and it hurt. But you didn't have it when you chose, so it doesn't get a vote.
Most people find the left side is much shorter than they remembered, and the right side is where most of their guilt has been living.
An example
A young woman I'll call Dana was nineteen when a friend offered her a room. She moved in fast. There was no lease with her name on it, and she didn't have any savings set aside. Three months later the friend moved out with almost no notice, the landlord wanted the full rent, and Dana couldn't cover it. She had to leave.
For a long time Dana told herself the whole thing was her fault. "I'm terrible at making decisions," she said.
When we sorted it out, it looked different.
On the left side were things Dana did know: that she wasn't on the lease, and that she had nothing saved if something went wrong. Those were real decisions, and with what she knew, they were risky ones. That part was hers.
On the right side were things she didn't know: that her friend was planning to leave, and how fast it would happen. That part was never hers to control.
So it wasn't "I'm terrible at making decisions." It was one risky call (moving in with no lease and no cushion) plus one outcome she couldn't have seen coming. That's a much smaller, much more fixable thing. And it gave her something useful: the next time she moved, she made sure her name was on the lease and kept a little money aside, even if it was only a few dollars a week.
Most real situations look like Dana's. Part decision, part outcome. The goal isn't to let yourself off the hook for everything. It's to stop carrying the parts that were never yours.
When it really was your call
Sometimes you do the fair look back and the answer is still: Yes, that was a bad decision. You had the information. You had other options. You chose badly anyway.
That's going to happen to everyone, more than once. Here's what to do with it.
Own it without shame
There's a difference between "I made a bad choice" and "I'm a bad person." The first one is guilt, and it's useful: it points at something you did and can do differently. The second one is shame, and it just makes you smaller. Say the first one out loud if it helps. Leave the second one alone.
Repair what you can
If your choice affected someone else, a simple, honest apology goes a long way: "I did this. I'm sorry. Here's what I'm going to do about it." If there's something practical you can fix, like paying back money, making a phone call or keeping a promise you broke, start there. Repair doesn't have to be big. It just has to be real.
Some things can't be repaired. That's hard, and it's okay to grieve it. You can still carry what you learned into the next thing.
Keep one lesson, not a list
After a bad decision, it's tempting to write yourself a long list of rules: never trust anyone, never take a chance, never do anything without being sure. That list doesn't protect you. It just shrinks your life.
Instead, keep one lesson. The most useful one. Dana's was "Get my name on the lease, and keep a small cushion." That's it. One clear lesson you can actually use is worth more than ten rules built out of fear.
Let it be finished
Once you've owned it, repaired what you can and kept your lesson, the decision has done its job. Replaying it again doesn't make you more responsible. It just keeps you stuck in the moment it happened.
When it comes back up, and it will, you can tell yourself: I've already dealt with that. Then turn your attention back to today.
What this is, and what it isn't
I'm not a therapist, and this isn't therapy. I'm Eli Halren, a life coach and mentor. For more than twenty years I've worked mostly with young adults coming through the foster care system, out of homelessness, surviving trafficking, fighting addiction, and raising children on their own, and with the adults who support them. My work is inspired by Trauma-Informed Care, neuroscience, and other studies. What I offer here is advice, built from that work and from my own life.
If an old decision is weighing on you so heavily that it's hard to get through the day, please talk to a professional. That's not the opposite of anything written here. It's the same goal with better tools.
In the US, you can reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline any time by calling or texting 988.
Where to start this week
One thing.
Pick one decision you still blame yourself for, and do the two-column check. What you knew on the left, what you learned later on the right. Judge it only by the left side.
If it was a reasonable call, let yourself put it down. If it really was a bad one, pick one small repair or one lesson, and then let it be finished.
Liked this article? Read the other parts of the Trusting Yourself series:
- Part 1: How to Trust Yourself Again After Trauma
- Part 2: How to Trust Yourself After Betrayal
- Part 3: Bad Decision or Bad Outcome? How to Tell the Difference (you're reading it)
- Part 4: How to Make Decisions When You Don't Trust Your Own Judgment (coming soon)