Kobayashi Maru

We don't seem to spend any time teaching people about limit assessment. We get so caught up in the 'you can do it!' mentality, that any other option is often ignored. When total success isn't achieved (which is often the case), we feel like failures. Sometimes, we did fail. Other times, the part that we failed to do was to fully comprehend our capacity to achieve a positive outcome.

This is why I've always liked the Star Trek concept of the Kobayashi Maru test. It's a learning exercise in Starfleet that puts cadets through a no-win situation in order to teach them how to respond when failure is inevitable. The test gives cadets a chance to process their own limitations and accept this as part of life. Sometimes we save the day. Other times, we lose everything. Quite often, we lose, but the loss is even more bitter because we know with just a few more points in our favor, we could have won.

There are points when life feels like an endless series of no-win situations, where our choices are made out of desperation. It sucks. And often, to take the sting out of the fact that it sucks, we'll 'console' ourselves by berating ourselves (or others) on what we'll do next time or what we could have done with more resources or what someone else should have done. This kind of thing may sooth us from thinking about the fact that often life is unfair and we're pretty powerless, but it also wastes what small bits of emotional energy we have left.

You're going to have to make tough decisions. Sometimes, you'll have to make downright heartbreaking decisions, ones that, if you had the means, you would never make. Don't beat yourself up for this. Life rarely offers us the question 'what is the best thing to do?' but gives us a whole lot of 'what is the least horrible thing to do?' situations. Grit your teeth, select the least horrible option, and move forward. Keep in mind, everyone else is usually making the least horrible choice as well.