Alone
The choices and decisions that we make in our times of aloneness are ours and ours alone. We tap our inner resources
and make decisions that only we can make, in the process coming more gradually to trust our own resources.
—IRA J. TANNER, Loneliness: The Fear of Love
When we are suffering from problem emotions, it is natural to devote our energy to dealing with them. Yet, managing practical matters such as basic decisions should not be neglected. Your emo-tional well-being depends in part on your skill in making good deci-sions for yourself. In particular, people who are alone need to under-stand their strengths and weaknesses as decision makers. Inevitably, the decision-making process for single people differs from the deci-sion-making process practiced by couples or families. There are 'fiajor differences, for example, in the way goals are set, the number
°f opinions that need to be processed, and the way a solution is developed.
Consider a major decision like buying a new car. Picture, if you '"> a person in the process of making such a decision. One image
80 LIVING WITH YOUR SELF
that is likely to come to mind is of Dad. Dad is sitting at a desk littered with bills and other ominous-looking missives (probably life-insurance plans). His brow is furrowed: Can he afford the car that he wants? Ca^
they afford the car the family needs? What does his wife think? Should he get automatic door locks to protect the children? As Dad ponders his focused desk lamp illuminates only his work, leaving the rest of the room in darkness. Through a doorway we see that in the next room the children are cooperating in the decision by keeping the television low or, better yet, by quietly studying. Mother is coming from the kitchen, where she has been making coffee, to confer with Dad. This idealized image conveys that this is a modern family, in which there is still one central decision maker but in which problems are, in some ways, shared.
Often the mode of decision making is similar for the decision maker who is alone. You may find yourself sitting in a darkened room, at a desk with a similar stack of bills and papers, with the familiar scowl. But though your mood may be alike in its focus and serious-ness, your situation is really different in a number of important re-spects.
On the down side, you may feel uncomfortable simply because you are alone while making your decision. Our culturally conditioned expectations of how decisions are made seldom includes the person alone, unless that person is some kind of hero. In fact, the traditional image that we Americans have is much like the scenario I've just described. In our culture, especially as presented on television,
"good" decisions are made within supportive family structures. Ev-eryone in the family has a particular role in the decision-making process, and each acts that role well to ensure the best outcome Even the children have a job, which is to leave Daddy and Mommy alone to make the decision. If you are alone, you may be sensitive to the fact that you must play all the roles. There is no spouse standing by with a cup of coffee or, for that matter, with helpful ideas. You mi feel some loss on this account. If you are really feeling sorry f<
yourself, you may feel that the absence of children or of a partner your life undermines the very meaningfulness of the decisions y face. You say to yourself, "Why worry so much about this decisi anyhow? It only affects me. It's not such a big deal."
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Yet, on the positive side, there is much to be said for not being party to the traditional decision-making scenario. As a lone decision maker, you have no one to please but yourself. You do not have to take the time and emotional energy to consider the goals and satisfac-tions of others. In a process uncomplicated by spouse and children,
v0u can simply go ahead and decide. When you need information to make your decision, you can get outside help. The telephone on your desk connects you with people who are at least as knowledgeable about the facts needed in the decision, and no doubt less opinionated, than a spouse would be. Because you don't have to spend time compromising with the family, you have time to make your own coffee, exactly as you like it. Furthermore, if the truth were to be told about the idealized family decision, the children aren't really sitting with the television turned low anyhow. They are arguing about which program to watch. The good wife is not making the coffee either.
After a hard day in the office, she has collapsed into a nearby chair hoping that her husband will make it.
People who make decisions alone lack appropriate role models and may not have a strong image of themselves as effective, efficient decision makers. By recognizing some of your disadvantages and your advantages in the decision-making process, you can learn to cope with the former while taking advantage of the latter.
Decision making is often thought of as simply the act of choosing between two alternatives, but really it is an entire process. Making a decision includes many steps: identifying the problem or problems, gathering information, creating alternative actions, deciding what ac-tion to take, implementing that acac-tion, and, finally, living with the results.
Each step suggests the need for certain personal skills, knowl-edge, time commitments, and attitudes. When decision making is a social process, it is complicated greatly by differing goals and emo-tions and by the need for communication, clarification, debate, and compromise. Organizations, which can be thought of as social sys-tems designed for collective decision making, often deal with this complexity by dividing up the steps of a decision-making process
among many people. Families develop their own decision-making habits. People who are alone will follow the same decision-making
DECISION-MAKING ALONE 83 82 LIVING WITH YOUR SELF
steps that organizations, families, couples, and other groups use, yet
their approach to each of the steps will necessarily be adapted to their particular needs.
Consider the initial step in decision making: the identification of the problem to be solved. Focusing on a problem is a different process for singles than it is for couples or for families. The person alone has fewer of others' problems to contend with, an obvious advantage. For the person who is not alone, the problems of the other people become topics for discussion, and the entire group has to discuss or consider
each person's issues. 1 When you are alone, you can concentrate on your own issues.
With freedom comes responsibility. You must assume the responsi-bility for identifying your problems. This is not as straightforward a process as it first appears. Often, out of habit, we rely upon others to help us see ourselves and gain a different perspective on issues.
Alone, you must compensate for the lack of other perspectives by being more observant and thoughtful about yourself and your
envi-ronment. Since making personal decisions is your responsibility, and only yours, you should focus even more strongly on your own prob-lems. You need to focus your energies and to be judicious in allowing yourself to become distracted by the problems of others. When you are alone, this selfishness is healthy.
At the same time, such intense self-awareness will have its disadvantages. For one thing, it may be seen by outsiders as self-centered. When alone, you need to counteract this impression by making an extra effort to put others at ease or by helping them to understand your situation. A related problem is that because you become so used to identifying your problems by yourself, you become less open to the valid observations of others. It is unlikely that people alone will hold the only valid interpretations of their behavior; they will often be able to profit from the observations of others. You are often party to conversations that tell you something about yourself: "You seem tense." "Do I?" "Yes, you are frowning a lot this morning." "Really? I guess I've just been so busy that I didn't notice how I was feeling." Yet just as when you are with others you may have the tendency to rely on them too much, when you are alone you may tend to rely on yourself too much. Your friends may
need to point out some of your problems for you. The best stance jS to find a balance between healthy selfishness and openness to the input of other people.
The next step in the decision-making process is collecting infor-mation about the problem. Suppose the problem is finding a new apartment. To do so, you need to assemble a lot of information about apartments, locations, comparable rents, parking, security, leases, and so on. You will invest a significant amount of your personal resources in time, intellect, and imagination. In this situation, the individual alone is obviously at a disadvantage. A couple who is mak-ing the same decision has twice as much time and two creative minds instead of one, and a family or network includes even more resources.
Under favorable circumstances that foster cooperation and open dis-cussion, groups make better decisions than would an individual who is alone. When a group or couple is open and relaxed, it can tap a larger knowledge base. Since individuals will each think about the problem somewhat differently, the group or couple will also have more different approaches to a problem and will be able to select the best one. The individual alone has a relatively limited amount of knowledge and will have a limited set of alternative approaches to a problem.
Suppose you want to find that new apartment across town. You read the newspaper ads for the community you have chosen and ask a friend who lives there to look around for you. Soon you have some leads, and you make appointments to see the apartments after work for several evenings in a row. After visiting half a dozen apartments, you settle on one and take home the lease to study it. Satisfied, you return across town the next day and give your deposit to the landlord.
You have followed a reasonable process. Yet, compare it with what a couple could do in the same situation. Harry and Sally each have friends in their target community, so they get more leads than you do. Sally has to work late one night—just like you do so often—but instead of canceling an appointment with a landlord, Harry goes. In reviewing the lease, Harry and Sally pool their collective experience in such matters, which, while it may not be exactly twice yours, is certainly more. Satisfied, the next day Sally drops the lease off be-cause their new apartment happens to be on her way to work.
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Of course, you are a more efficient decision maker than are either couples or families. You avoid meetings and arguments. And it is true that you can use the time you thus save to seek additional information and to create more approaches to the problem. Still, the adage that two heads are better than one does hold some truth.
Because much of their knowledge will overlap, two people may not always have twice as much knowledge as one, but they typically have more knowledge than the individual alone does. A family or group has even more.
Realizing this fact, as every person alone must, can increase your fear of being alone. We live in a competitive society, in which singles must compete with couples for such daily necessities as housing and for such luxuries as hotel rooms. In a species that has survived by its intelligence, any perceived deficiency in decision making that comes from being excluded from a group is bound to increase anxiety.
However, in the twentieth century, our primitive fears of exclusion are allayed by the fact that the individual does not really need to know very much to survive. We do not need to know how to build a house or grow crops or treat illnesses to live safely, eat well, and stay healthy.
Some decisions do, however, require in-depth knowledge. It is one thing to plunk down the money to rent an apartment. It is quite another thing to buy a house. You not only shop for the house, but you try to get a good buy, arrange for the mortgage, and manage the upkeep. Personal financial planning is another area in which you wil need broad expertise. Even twenty years ago, investment decisions were relatively uncomplicated. With today's proliferation of financia instruments and the volatility of world economies, such decisions require a great deal of knowledge. For these kinds of complex deci sions, you must learn to compensate for living alone.
Consider lowering some of your expectations. For example when you are making a complicated decision alone, you should expec' to invest a great deal of time in gathering information. You may no be able to make your final decision quickly. Because of time con straints, you may want to simplify some of your decisions, investing for example, in mutual funds instead of more volatile individua stocks.
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At the same time, you can compensate by choosing to spend some of your time systematically learning about those complicated issues that you face. Major decisions—buying a house, planning in-vestments, providing adequate insurance, developing a career—sel-dom arrive unexpectedly. When important and complex decisions do occur, you can be prepared. Couples, lulled into complacency, often fail to continue learning about life's more complicated business. It is not uncommon for responsibility to become diffused within the cou-ple. Each relies on the other's knowledge, which may be outdated or simply wrong. One says, "My spouse knows a lot about the stock market, so I don't need to know more." When you are alone, you cannot afford not to know, and you will not blindly rely on others to know. You wisely learn the basics and continue to update your knowl-edge.
In summary, when you are alone it is important to fight the primitive feeling of anxiety that comes from being "excluded" from the tribe. It is important to distinguish those problems that require detailed knowledge from those that do not. Reserve your energy for studying those problems that in our society are complicated and risky, especially financial matters, major purchases, and health-related deci-sions.
Moreover, when you are alone you should make systematic efforts to identify experts who can help you to expand your knowl-edge. In identifying lawyers, accountants, doctors, and others, singles tend to have fewer immediate contacts than do others. They simply have fewer opportunities to make them, and they cannot rely on their spouse to know people to enlarge their networks. One coping strat-egy is to realize this weakness and compensate by taking systematic advantage of the contacts you do have. Make a special effort to join professional and recreational and other networking groups. Happily,
a person alone can elicit outside help from experts without offending
a partner who believes himself or herself to be the in-house expert.
Thus unfettered, you can always chose the best possible counsel.
When you are alone, you will solve problems according to your
°wn personality and experience; you will tend to use certain problem-solving approaches over others. For example, if you are what has
°een called a right-brain dominant individual, you will solve problems
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more intuitively and holistically. If you are a left-brain dominant indi-vidual, you will tend to solve problems more logically, sequentially, and analytically. Individuals' decision-making styles also differ iiJ terms of their ability and training to think logically, manage time, and maintain self-discipline. Savvy corporations take advantage of the fact that their employees have different styles by creating problem-solv-ing teams that combine people with different approaches. The same strategy will work well for individuals. Often the individual who is alone should seek others whose decision-making styles differ from their own. Creative, intuitive persons might seek out analytic types for example. Thus, you can assure that you will see a problem from various angles, and you will be better equipped to ensure its happy solution. The person who tends to make hasty decisions would do well to find a consultant/friend who is more methodical. The person who tends to focus on the general framework of a problem would do well to find a consultant who is detail oriented. When you are alone you must know what your own problem-solving style is, and yo should learn to complement it. Identify friends with complementar styles who are willing to help you to make some decisions. You ma also be able to compensate by learning additional new styles.
Once information is gathered and different approaches to thl problem are adopted, the next step in the decision-making process i.
to select a solution. People choose different solutions in large part o the basis of their ability to implement them. Though couples am
groups may be highly focused and committed to a solution, compare to the person alone they are usually at a disadvantage. It is less likel that any one solution will please all group members, and when th solution is implemented, some members may resist. This resistanc will be time consuming, annoying, and potentially sabotaging to tt solution. Because you alone have done all the decision making, y<
will have a clear focus on your problem and a strong commitment your selected solution. You are more likely to take Mark Twaii view that you should put all your eggs in one basket—and then wat that basket! This effect on implementation of the desired solution widely known in business start-ups. Entrepreneurs are focused, s gle-minded, and motivated. It is not surprising, then, that it is '
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person alone, not couples or groups, who most often establishes a successful new company.
Yet in implementing a solution, you must also keep in mind your limitations. As the one person to implement the decision, you have relatively less time. You have fewer hands to perform necessary tasks. Consider household work. Although some housework is
Yet in implementing a solution, you must also keep in mind your limitations. As the one person to implement the decision, you have relatively less time. You have fewer hands to perform necessary tasks. Consider household work. Although some housework is