I believe that it is best to ask a multitude of people for their opinion before making a decision. Having multiple opinions instead of just one leads to a better understanding of the situation, along with a variety of choices and reassurance in the decision. There have been many times in life that I have had to make an important decision. For instance, during my first year of middle school, I had to decide on what to do for a longtime friend who had chosen to prioritize her other friends over me. At the time, I chose to ask three people for advice; a mutual friend, an outside friend, and my mom. During the process, I learned that there were several advantages to seeking advice from multiple people instead of limiting myself to one.

Firstly, I was able to understand the situation more fully from the feedback that I got from different people. Initially, I had felt resentment towards my friend for choosing her other friends over me. However, from listening to different opinions, I was able to put together a better, more unbiased view of the situation. The mutual friend that I had talked to mostly shared the same opinion as me, while the outside friend was more sympathetic towards my friend. On the other hand, my mom had a completely different opinion from any of us. She thought that my friend wasn't choosing her other friends over me, per say, but just learning to get along with others in our age group as well. By putting the various opinions together, I was able to acknowledge that the fault did not fully lie with my friend and that there could be a misunderstanding.

Secondly, I had a wider range of choices due to having asked many different people. Individually, I was only offered a single solution that they believed would be the best choice of action. As a total, however, I had three different choices because each person had offered a choice each. The mutual friend felt that I should remain passive and make a final decision to either keep or break our friendship based on how the situation resolved itself. On the contrary, the outside friend believed that I should directly confront my friend and work out the misunderstanding. Finally, my mom thought that I could remain friends with her, but just not as closely as before. As a result, I chose to remain distant friends with her instead of making any drastic decisions. From having a variety of choices, I felt that I had a lot of freedom in making my decision.

Lastly, from asking for advice from multiple people, I felt more reassured that I had truly weighed all my options before settling on one. I placed trust in those I had asked for advice and myself when making my final decision. Although I may have remained uncertain if I had only asked one person, I was confident in my choice. I had taken the time and effort to speak with three vastly different people with differing viewpoints and I knew that I had done all that I could in order to ensure that I wouldn't be making a mistake. It was easy for me to finalize my decision because of the certainty that I felt regarding my choice.

In conclusion, I believe that seeking multiple opinions is beneficial to making a decision because it leads to a mostly unbiased view of the problem, a wide range of choices, and confidence in the decision. Although there may be exceptions to this, it was true in my experiences. There is no shame in asking for help in making a decision. After all, even the wisest can have trouble with making personal choices. When encountered with a troubling decision, it is best to ask for multiple opinions from various people. I learned many lessons from the experience of making a choice about my friend, but the most important one was that asking for advice from a variety of people can lead to a better decision than one you may make from one person's advice.