One of the major obstacles to the acquisition of life insurance is procrastination. I’ve written extensively on why it is so easy to defer making this decision. But avoiding life’s difficult decisions isn’t usually a recipe for success; in fact it is usually the opposite. And it, obviously, doesn’t only apply to life insurance.
A Google search of “kick the can down the road” gave the following definition: “Delaying a decision in hopes that the problem or issue will go away or somebody else will make the decision later.” Again, hoping that the problem goes away is not what’s taught in leadership class. The fact that indeed some problems will eventually go away does not make it the preferred method of decision making.
Additionally, an active decision is always more responsible than a passive decision. That is, making a decision with the information at hand is preferable to kicking the can down the road, even if the passive decision ultimately turns out okay.
Hoping that someone else will make the decision later is pretty much the definition of shirking responsibility. First, there’s no guarantee that someone will step up to make the decision and second, even if they do, it’s not certain that they will be the ideal person to make that decision. In other words, a less qualified person may ultimately wind up making the decision.
A historical example of kicking the can down the road with disastrous consequences is when the framers of the Constitution punted on the issue of slavery. It took seventy-odd years, but the Civil War was a result of not resolving the slavery issue in 1789.
But back to the life insurance issue. My job involves getting people to address important issues that they probably wouldn’t otherwise do. In other words, to help them overcome the tendency to procrastinate on such vital matters.
Deciding to not buy life insurance is not necessarily a bad or wrong decision, provided all factors were considered and an active decision was made. It becomes wrong when the can is kicked down the road, when “I’ll think about it” becomes, paradoxically, a way to avoid thinking about it, when the real issues involved are not addressed. A passive decision is still a decision, albeit not the optimal method.
So we would all be better off if we made it a point to make active decisions. Not only would those decisions be apt to be better than passive decisions, but we would get the added benefit of feeling good about ourselves, because we took the responsible route.