In order to make good decisions, you need to have a certain maturity. Otherwise the goals will not be clear, you won’t take into account your true strengths and limitations, and, in the end you might make decisions for all the wrong reasons.

Here are some signs of maturity and immaturity:

Signs of maturity:

• Having a balanced conscience, without feelings of guilt or anxieties. That means having a healthy self-concept so you don’t believe you’re greater than you are, nor do you undervalue yourself.
• Capacity to keep balanced emotional relationships. That means avoiding obsessions and  unnatural detachments.
• Mutual relationships rather than relationships built on the search for influence or personal benefit. That means dealing with people honestly.
• Establishing true friendships.

Signs of immaturity

• Lack of sociability, withdrawal, mistrust. Avoiding social situations. Always suspecting the intentions of others.
• Friendships formed to obtain benefits or favors, not for the good of the other.
• Friendships formed to dominate others.
• Relationships that are too temperamental.
• Emotional relationships dominated by jealousy and mistrust.

Before making a decision, take your emotional temperature. It helps to know what produces positive or negative feelings in you: Which of your life experiences are most difficult for you to accept? Do they trouble you every time you remember them? What are the significant events in your past life that you believe are the foundation of your present life?

What events and decisions are more directly related to your present moment? When you think about the future, what is the dominant feeling: hope and anticipation or fear and mistrust?

—Adapted from ACIT Joven

(Teresian Association)

¡OYE! 2005