What’s Your “What Was I Thinking?” Moment?

Everyone has one.  One of those moments where you look back and ask yourself “What was I thinking?”

Perhaps it was the guy you dated despite the protests from your friends and family. It could be the job change you made thinking that the money would make it worth the soul-crushing work.  Or the jumbo cheesy pretzel dog you ate right before boarding a long flight.  Cashing out your 401k?  Driving drunk?  Having you kid’s birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese?

There are so many opportunities in life to make the wrong choice/decision, but what matters the most is how you recover from those mistakes.  Did you take time to reflect on what went wrong in the decision making process?  Where did you lose focus on logic and reason?  If the opportunity/situation presented itself again today, how would you handle it differently?

Here’s one of my biggest “What was I thinking?” moments:

When I was a senior in high school I was given the amazing opportunity to travel to Spain and Africa.  We arrived in the middle of the summer and it was 110 degrees in the shade.  It was miserable.  Our hotel’s policy was to turn on the air conditioning on a certain date as opposed to heat level (critical thinking fail?). So, my roommate and I were desperate.  The only thing that made our hotel room bearable was when a tiny breeze wafted through our room, however with only 1 window that was a rare event.

At some point we realized that when our door was open the air flowed through the room easily.  Great…problem solved- we just left our door open all night.  Yes, that’s right, two 17 year old girls who were staying in a foreign country thought it was a good idea to leave their hotel room door open all night long.  Thankfully nothing happened to us, but now I look back and say “What was I thinking?”

I could blame this poor choice on immaturity and lack of life experiences, but truthfully, I was fully aware of the risk.  Where I erred was in my ability to weigh the benefit of comfort from a breeze to the risk of being kidnapped, murdered, robbed, etc.  I made the assumption that because my entire hotel floor consisted of other students from my high school that I was safe.  I assumed no one else would walk through the hallway of my hotel floor.  I assumed the other students on the trip wouldn’t harm me if they realized my door was open while I slept.

In the end, the core to my poor decision was a belief that good people don’t do bad things.

Today, I wouldn’t make the same mistake.  While nothing bad happened to me on my trip to Spain, I still learned from my error in judgement.  I am very cautious when I travel now and often think about how lucky I was that I made it home safely.

If you take a “What was I thinking?” moment and turn it into a life lesson then you won’t make the same mistake again.  Reflection is a core component to critical thinking. The more you reflect and improve your decisions based on your life experiences, the better decisions you will make in the future.

What is your biggest “What was I thinking?” moment?