We make decisions every day. What to wear, which route to take, how to spend our money. The smaller decisions are relatively easy because you can probably cope with the result of making the wrong decision. But what about the bigger decisions?
What stops us from making decisions? In most cases it's the fear of getting it wrong.
'Fear' is expecting something unpleasant to happen in the future, based on the experience of something that happened in the past.
Do you remember the last 'bad' or 'wrong' decision you made? How did you manage with the fallout, the embarrassment, picking up the pieces?
The unconscious fear behind making a big decision, more often than not, is whether we can cope if we make the 'wrong decision'.
Before you make a big decision, consider whether you can handle it if it's the wrong decision. A good way of helping you to have more faith in your decision making is to determine what your style is. What's working and what's not?
Review your most recent 'good' decisions. How did you make the decision? What was your decision making strategy? Was it based on gut instinct, how it would affect other people, or was it based on fact, rationale and research. Or maybe a mixture?
I have found it useful to make a list of all the good decisions I've made and how I made them, then a list of the poor decisions I made – and how I made them. It's interesting to see a theme emerging!
My natural style is to follow my gut instinct, my emotions. I decide whether I like someone and gather personal recommendations. Yet often I forget to gather solid facts and figures and do the research. Now that I'm aware of where I've been going wrong, I know that it's important for me to use my logical and rationale side, as well as my emotional side.
Look on the bright side, when you make a wrong decision, at least you can learn from the experience. If you choose to of course.
"Good decisions come from experience, and experience comes from bad decisions." Anon
