Anyways, you might be thinking what what the point of all of this is, why I had asked you to draw a matrix with four scenarios and why you should even bother to draw this and consider hanging this up on your wall?

First, let me get this straight: Life is stressful. Whatever sappy motivational speech or song or movie we watch, the underlying fact that life is f*cked up is not going to change. Everyone goes through negativity, depression, anxiety, anger, and, ultimately, failure. Yet, we look to those very same sappy motivational videos, we look forward to venting our emotions to our friends and family, and we simply try to push hard and push through the obstacle of what life can shove right at our faces. Why?

We are all lively humans bubbling with emotion, and none of us are invincible to what life might hit us with.

“We all have real feelings that get hurt and threatened [and] that … makes us human” (S. Perez).

Despite such hurt feelings and emotions, most of us don’t give up. We seek positivity, hope, confidence, love, and, ultimately, a sense of mental success to combat whatever life throws at us. We use mechanisms, such as motivational videos and friends and family and sheer mental strength to make the most and the best of our lives, and the matrix that I asked you to draw with me is one such mechanism: the Decision Matrix of Life.

Our lives are the contemplative processes of existence that are governed by the choices we, the Gods of our reality, make. To live the life that you wish to live, you will have to make appropriate decisions, and the Decision Matrix of Life is a crucial mechanism that I believe will help us through making our life our intended reality.

We are given the opportunity to make decisions in the first place because of the events that happen in our lives. These events have major timeline aspects — the short run and the long run. The short-run involves the timeline of the near future after a certain event. It does carry a subjective connotation, as it can vary from hours to days to even weeks and months depending upon the magnitude of the situation. On the other hand, the long run is any period that is relatively longer than the short run for that same event. For instance, when I lost my phone, my short-run timeline of grief lasted a couple of weeks while the long run is considered to anything beyond those two weeks.

These two timeline aspects are key to making decisions. The short-run can be considered to be the whimsical phase where our emotions are uncontrollable. You might start partying after receiving the acceptance letter to your reach school, or you might wallow in your sorrow after failing your final exam for your favorite class. Basically, the short-run mostly comprises of our instinctual behavior (what Freud liked to call as the Id).

The long run, though, is the most crucial component of any such events. They govern our direction in our lives. If you are still hung up over your ex-girlfriend after a year, drinking every day and depressed every minute, or if you are still swimming in your fantasies after a month of earning your grand first paycheck, not working anymore, then there are problems. Simply put, the long run emotions and behaviors are what need to be tamed to live the life you have always wanted to live.

If you have not noticed already, these timeline concepts are best applicable only when you do not have control over a situation, as you react to the situation in either the short run or the long run after the situation has occurred.

Now, let me give you a simple situation: you have a test for psychology in two weeks and you have two options: to prepare or to slack off.

With two weeks to go, you have control of the situation, as it is your choice to study or not to study that will determine the outcome. So, if you choose to study proactively, then you choose to act on the situation. You are actively working towards a good grade as you determine your fate from the driver’s seat. In other words, you are pursuing mastery, as you take action when you have control over the situation. However, if you choose not to study, you are simply giving up, as although you have control over the situation, you choose not to act on it. You do nothing and you waste your opportunity to get a good grade in the class.

Now look back to the matrix and observe where mastery and giving up lie.

It is the day of the test and you have barely studied. Panicked, you take the test, and you end up receiving the undesired and the loathed F, pulling your class average down to a C.

Now, let us break this down into its short run and long run since this is a scenario that has occurred after a certain situation.

Short Run: You are distraught at the grade you received, and, you know what, it is completely ok. You have every right to be mad at yourself and even mad at life for all it’s worth, as anger and sadness makes us human. None of us are invincible.

Long Run: Because it was such an important test, you simply cannot accept what has happened. You are so distraught that you are constantly thinking about your failure and degrading your mental well-being by lowering your self-esteem and your self-worth in the process. When you no longer have control over the test you just took, you are constantly acting on it by worrying about it. In other words, you are ceaselessly striving. While in reality, you know that you can no longer take active action on getting a better score on that test, and all that’s left to do is to simply accept what has happened and let go. Now, look back to your matrix to see where ceaselessly striving and letting go are.