We know that it is not good to make decisions based on emotions or feelings. We have heard a lot about the shortcomings of it, yet we still find ourselves, in one way or another, getting involved in it. Many of us have been victims of it, many will still be, and the cycle continues. I have been a victim countless times, and most of those decisions were made in moments of happiness, only for things to turn regretful in the end.
One such incident is what I want to share in this blog.
I remember it clearly—it happened three years ago. A church friend, whom I was very close to, got a new phone and decided to give me the one he had been using.
I was so happy because I did not expect it, and the phone was way better than the one I was using. It was not as if my phone was bad, no, it was still in a fine state, but the one my friend gave me was far better. Out of sheer excitement, I sold my old phone the very next day to use the money to solve a financial problem because I was having financial issues at the time. I did not think twice about it; I just went ahead and sold it at a cheap price.
Guess what? After about two weeks of using the phone, the guy who gave it to me called me one day, pleading with me to lend it back to him because the one he had bought had a screen issue, and he did not have the money to repair it. Everything sounded so strange to me—I could not believe it. I thought the phone was given to me permanently, so why did he want it back? Many thoughts ran through my mind, especially how I was going to get a new phone once he collected his back. The worst part was that I had no money at the time to buy another phone, not even a fairly used one to keep me from being completely phoneless.
Before I knew it, the guy came to my house the next day. He explained how desperate he was to have the phone so he could stay connected until he was able to fix his damaged one. He even showed me the faulty phone—a Samsung—and I knew that getting a screen replacement for it was very costly. He also asked if I still had my old phone to use once he got his back, and I told him that I had sold it the very next day after he gave me his. He needed his phone, and there was nothing I could do. I just gave it back to him.
Unsplash
Maybe this was not the deepest kind of emotional decision, but if I had waited, if I had decided to hold on a little longer before selling my old phone, maybe I could have sensed what was coming. But I had allowed the excitement of the moment to override my reasoning.
After he took the phone back, I had to save up to buy a small, fairly used Tecno phone. It is well.
Thanks!