How important is it to seek the opinions of others when making significant personal decisions?

Some of us forget how important it is to seek opinions of others when making a significant decision. We all have friends and families who look out for us and not consulting with them on matters of such gravity risks creating tension among one another.

Moving to a new house fits well in this category. Some, not all, families don’t go to such a length as to ask whether it is a good idea to move and whether it has an effect on anybody else. Instead, these decisions are made in a vacuum and the consequences are not taken into consideration. If parents of a certain family decide to move without consulting their children they might risk the future of the kids. These kids might end up moving to a bad school where they become peer pressured into performing unethical deeds or could reach a point where making a new social group becomes so difficult to them as to stop or give up on the whole social interaction process.

Another example can be lack of free flow of opinion in a marriage. Some couples have a tendency of not informing or being interested in the daily events of the other, as we commonly see on TV shows. This might result in one of them making a significant decision without seeking the opinion of the other. This could be decisions like buying a new house, a new car, or even a large-scale investment which could send them into financial default and which could finally lead to divorce. And all this is without considering the psychological problems this could cause to their children.

Both these examples could have avoided such risks if they had asked for opinion. And so it goes to say that most decision that we make, even the ones that we consider quite personal, should not be made as a private decision. We are social human beings and we should at least consult with or ask for opinion of someone whom we trust so we could avoid any repercussions that might happen.