you'll never get 100% acceptability

It is very common for us to get second opinions especially on the things that matter most to us like matters concerning our health, relationship, property investments, changing a car, etc. It is in such situations we tend not to trust our own judgement entirely and seek the opinion of others. Not surprising since the stakes would generally be higher when we need to decide on important matters in our lives.

I guess the main stem of the problem is all about trying to balance out the formula below:

PROS + OPPORTUNITIES - CONS - RISKS = DECISION

When standing at the crossroad of our lives, we end up trying to juggle how much benefits and opportunities we want to maximise from our choices without giving away too much cons and opening ourselves to unnecessary risk. That's when we start doing what we accountants call, "opinion shopping" - we go all out speaking to as many as people as we can trying to see if everyone can give us a piece of the formula so that we can finally make our minds. 

It is all well and good trying to get different sides of the story because different people have different experiences that can make us grow and learn. Whilst absorbing the views of others are good in terms of giving you a holistic view but we absorb too much of the views of others we end up with a myriad of views and end up spinning to many permutations and thus, blurring our observation. At the end of all the opinion shopping, instead of a decision you get indecision.

Hence, it may be good to sometimes just take some time out to think for yourself what you want out of the decision you are trying to make. At the end of the day, the decision you intend to make affects you the most so why let the opinion of others cloud your mind into fearing the unknown. Trying to figure out and break down every unknown in your life is as good as trying to play God and predict the future, which you can try and not get any results in a million years. Those who try, don't get it right all the time - weather forecast, stock exchange analysts, horse racing pundits, football pundits and the list goes on.

What you need in a decision making process is an acceptable level of acceptability - acceptability in your mind and not others. Set a threshold and if you think it meets that threshold, that's when you know whether it's a go or no go. At the end of the day you'll never get 100% acceptability for one reason - life's hardly perfect.