CHAPTER 8  The Right Decision Often Feels Wrong

Recently, a listener of the The Mel Robbins Podcast wrote to me with this question:

Mel, I'm engaged and soon to be married. The wedding is a few weeks away and I know this should be one of the happiest moments of my life. But it's not. The closer we get to the wedding, the more my fiancée and I are fighting. I can't stop shaking this feeling of dread. Deep down, I am afraid I am making a huge mistake. I don't know what to do. The invitations are out, my parents and hers have already put down the deposits for everything. I don't want to disappoint my family. I don't want my parents to lose their money. I don't want to break my fiancée's heart. I don't want her parents and everyone else we know to be mad at me. How do I call this off?

Just reading the question, I could feel my heart seize. I bet yours did too. When the stakes feel this high, the right answer always feels wrong.

On the surface, the answer is simple, even though it doesn't feel like it. He should call it off. If you're dreading the wedding, you are making a mistake. If you can't stop thinking about calling it off, then you should.

Just because the right decision seems clear, doesn't always mean it's an easy decision to make. That's because the human experience is largely an emotional one.

What seems logical on the surface doesn't feel logical when you know it will cause other people a lot of pain.

Too often in life, when you're in that dilemma, you choose to inflict the pain on yourself instead of making a decision that you know is right for you but is going to be painful for other people to accept.

The groom who wrote to me knows, intellectually, what he needs to do. The problem is his emotions. He wrote to me because he is seeking reassurance. He has absolutely no idea how to handle what he's feeling, or how to deal with the emotional upset it will trigger in other people.

Agonizing over a difficult decision is a mentally healthy response to a very difficult situation. The fact that he is worried about other people is a sign that he's a good person.

There will be many times in your life when people are going to be mad, disappointed, or heartbroken by the things you say or do. There just will be. You have to be able to separate yourself from your emotions and the emotional reactions of others when you're determining the right decision to make.