People Are Always Making the Best Choices They Can

This knowledge can and will change how you view life. People are always making the best choice that they can with the available of resources they currently have. This is an old NLP Presupposition, but it has a far reaching impact of how you can look at life.

Every decision you have ever made, you made it at the time because you believed then that it would be the best for you. This means that the choice was made because you didn’t have any better choices or because you really thought that choosing what you did would be a really good idea.

Now, it’s important to know that people make some really bad decisions!

But this doesn’t change this presupposition or even how this works in life. Sure, when you were 13 you decided to skip school and miss your math test that allowed you to fail algebra, but what is underlying all of that is that you made the decision at the time because you thought it was the best for you or because you didn’t believe that there were any other better options.

In a more positive example, the man chooses to marry his wife when he does because he believes it will be a positive benefit to him. This choice is better than not marrying her or asking another woman to get married. Of course, this could be the best choice he makes in his life or it could even be the worst. 

Ok, so now let’s get really deep with this knowledge. Stated differently, any action other people are taking in their lives is because they somehow view it to be positive for them in some way. This is the man who believes that a job is his best route to wealth, this is the woman who continues to smoke even though she knows it is bad for her health, or the man who eats far too much and knows he should go on a diet, but doesn’t.

All of these decisions, whether they are made or not made, are benefitting the decision maker. The man is comfortable in a job and would rather want to feel safe and secure than wealthy. The woman wants to feel social or relaxed when smoking and doing so gives her this feeling. The man gets freedom when he is allowed to eat whatever whenever he wants and this surpasses his perceived need for health. All of these choices are made with the person’s best intent at heart.

Where this becomes a problem is when people are limited in their view of life and how these decisions are really affecting them and the world around them.

Of course the man wants safety and security however when his corporate job employs massive layoffs because of the new computer technology, it becomes a problem. When the women who has been smoking for years finally has a cough that makes her health more of a priority than her need to feel social, then this becomes a problem. When the man who has been overeating for years wants a wife and this need exceeds his desire for freedom, then this becomes a problem.

This problem is perpetuated by pain within the person making the decisions. In any of the above situations they will feel pain because they are stuck in a corporate job, can’t stop smoking, can’t lose weight, or a myriad of other problems. The pain comes to be resounding when their is a possibility of making a different choice yet the person isn’t quite ready to make the change.

What is important in all of this is that the person is making the best decision that they can with all of the available resources they have.

This of course doesn’t mean that they are always making good decisions as demonstrated above, but when they make these choices, they always see it as the best choice to make. Otherwise, they wouldn’t make the decision.

People are not really out there directly trying to harm you as well, but they are first and most importantly trying to take care of themselves.

So when someone is in traffic and giving you the bird, just know that they are making the best decision that they can with the resources that they currently have. Other people with different resources don’t really feel a need to do that so it is just fine.

The same with your loved ones and family or anyone else you know. People are always making the best decisions they can so have compassion for them and accept them for who they. Sometimes people need more options and this can be something you can help them to gain, but just know that they are doing their best.