Life is not about getting what you want, it’s about learning how to deal with what you get. Nobody wants a bad marriage, grief, sorrow, health issues, children who argue, mental illness (the world’s longest run-on sentence, according to my wife I hold the record) and bad business decisions. Heck, Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty knows about that all too well. I’m sure he never expected the backlash that he received from doing an interview. Personally, he should have seen this coming. A fashion magazine wanting to interview an individual whose wardrobe consists of 100% camouflage should have made him suspicious and cause him to ask questions.

If Phil would have called us, we would have helped him analyze his situation in order to help him understand all of the angles that could occur in the decision-making process and the fallout. We would have discussed the importance of how a message is delivered. It’s not just what you say, but how you say it.

A lot of what we see in the counseling field involves helping someone clean up the mess of their poor decisions or helping them construct a plan for a better tomorrow. There are times in life where if individuals would consult a counselor before they made a life decisions., the entire fallout could have been avoided.

Consulting your friends when making big decisions is a smart thing, but realize that friends may say what you want to hear. A professional counselor on the other hand, may not give the popular answer but instead help analyze the consequences of a decision and how it will affect all the people in your world.

By Ron Lee, @RonLeeLPCi