Good decision, bad outcome.

Let's say it looks like it's gonna rain. You decide to take your umbrella with you. And it doesn't end up raining.

Did you make a bad decision? Should you not have carried the umbrella?

Well, in this case, you might ask, "It didn't hurt me, did it?"

On the contrary, if you thought it wouldn't rain and you left without the umbrella, and you ended up being wrong, it would be a different story altogether.

We evaluate our decisions based on what the outcome is. This is known as resulting and is one of the most common errors in decision making. The thing we forget is that there is no way we would know if it's gonna rain or not when we are making the decision.

What is the choice that we would be happy with irrespective of the outcome? Can we make that choice even if everyone else is choosing otherwise?