How to Make Decisions

We are all faced with making decisions all day long. Some are small, easy, carry low risk, have minimal impact if it's not the right choice. But many are harder, they have bigger consequences, they may affect other people or result in a substantial change to how you life your life. Indeed making BIG decisions seems to be a theme amongst my clients at the moment - whether to change jobs, decide which job to take or even to quit corporate life, whether to take a sabbatical and work abroad on a project, whether to move from London back to their native country, whether to live elsewhere in the UK or even emigrate a family to New Zealand.

I raised the question of what approaches we can use to help us make decisions at a recent Thinking Environment® Alumni Group and I have collated a summary of the ideas to share with you below. I hope you find them useful.

1. Make decisions with your Head, Heart and Gut. Some decisions are best dealt with emotionally – we select the option that feels best. Others need to be thought through intellectually, logically. For example, work through the pros/cons of all possible decision scenarios. Many are best dealt with intuitively. What’s your instinct/intuition telling you? Listen to it as there’s usually a reason and in many cases, we simply justify rationally whatever decisions we really want to make.

2. Connect with your values and honour what is most important to you. What are your values? Are you clear what they are? When you make decisions that dishonour your values, it will lead to frustration and resentment, and be detrimental to your well-being.

3. Know what your ‘why?’ is. Is your decision aligned to your purpose? Go after what creates meaning in your life and trust yourself you can handle what's needed to get you there.

4. Look at the various consequences of different decisions; when we understand all the consequences, we are better equipped to deal with them. Be careful not to over-estimate what could go wrong. Also do not under-estimate your resourcefulness if things don’t go according to plan; you are able to deal with the unexpected and cope with more than you think. 

5. Live with you decision for a period of time, perhaps a week.

6. Be compassionate with yourself when things don’t go according to plan. Mistakes are normal; what can you learn from them? Sometimes they can lead to unexpected results, which can be better than anything you imagined.

7. There’s no such thing as a wrong decision; you make a decision and then make it right.

8. Few decisions are irreversible or unchangeable.

9. If you cannot decide, ask yourself why that might be. What are the reasons for indecision? What are your fears? Are they true or are they irrational limiting beliefs? How can you address them?

10. Consider the cost of inaction, or the cost of one action over another? How will you feel in a year if you didn’t take action? “Have a go or live with regret.”

11. Do nothing. Deciding not to make a decision is also a decision. Some decisions are best left alone for now.

12. In some cases, we just have to do what we have to do. We don’t have a choice about what to do, but we DO have a choice about how we think about it, you can choose your attitude.

13. Work with a coach - “the quality of everything we do depends on the quality of the thinking we do first”. Coaching provides an environment to do really good thinking. It helps you articulate and sort through your thoughts and unlocks break-through thinking. 

14. Consider different perspectives. Coaching will also help you think about things from different points of view or with a different attitude.

15. Exercise can help you get clear on your thoughts and allows insights to emerge.

16. Mindfulness or meditation, also frees the mind to think.

17. Doing the right thing to do is often the hardest thing to do, don't take the easy path

18. Trust yourself and have faith that it will work out and that “all will be well’.

Do you like making decisions? Which approaches have you tried? Do share in the comments what you have found to be helpful when you are struggling with indecision. And if you would like to find out about how coaching can help you think well, then please do get in touch - don't think about it! I'd be very pleased to have a chat :)