How to learn to make good decisions

Are you one of those who takes a while every day to decide what clothes to wear? When you meet a friend for a drink, do you always leave the responsibility to the other to choose the place? Go to a buffet free is hell because you are overwhelmed by so much food to choose from? Well, keep reading because what I'm going to tell you interests you.

Notice that one of the things we do most in our day to day is make decisions. From the moment you get up until you go to bed. And your life is a direct consequence of all of them. When we think of making decisions we usually think of big and momentous decisions like study philosophy or mathematics, or marry my boyfriend or not.

But throughout the day we take many more. Have toast or cereal for breakfast, go to work by bus or on foot, etc ... And on many occasions, what makes the differences are these small decisions.

With this article you will learn to make better decisions and to end the bad habit of indecision to be at peace and satisfied with your life.

Common mistakes when making decisions

1. Focus on what you reject

Do not look at what you stop earning, what in economics is known as the opportunity cost, if not in what you can win if you choose that option. This way you will not fall into the dreaded paralysis by analysis. Which is neither more nor less than not making any decision due to excessive analysis.

2. Delay decision making

We become procrastinators. We leave for later what we should decide NOW. If you wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything you have ready, you have it clear and there is no type of risk or uncertainty, you will never make a decision, and that is the worst decision. To avoid this mistake, set a deadline for resolution and stick with it.

3. Be afraid of being wrong

Failure is part of the success process. Successful people make a lot of mistakes. What happens is that they make mistakes early, young, cheap and only once in each thing. That's the idea. You are going to be wrong yes or yes. And those mistakes will be great teachers for you. Therefore, lose the fear of error.

Before continuing, I would like you to write down on a piece of paper at this time about which you have to make a decision. I want this post to be as useful as possible and serve you at least for the most immediate question you have.

You already have it? Let's go for it!

Suggestions for making good decisions:

• Establish what is priority and secondary in your life. The first goes before. And many times we do not put the first thing before making a decision. And we make decisions based on the secondary goals of our life.

I recommend that you make a list of the most important things in your life. 5 things. And rate them from 1 to 5, according to their importance. And when you have to make a decision ask yourself how it affects these 5 things. By order. If it favors them you will be making the right decision, if it does not favor them you will be making the wrong decision.

• Implants firewall. Firewalls will be limits that you will not pass when making decisions. Or what is the same, you make the decision, before making the decision. With this you avoid making the decision hot or letting yourself be carried away by emotions. Thus, you protect yourself from yourself.

Example: Going to a job interview knowing that less than X money, more than X hours or less than X responsibility, I will not do it, I will not accept it.

• If you've made a bad decision, FLEE! Get out as soon as possible. Life is too short to insist on things that do not bring you anything. Sometimes we make the wrong decision and hope it will change. We persist. And I'll tell you something, every day that passes, how you have invested more, in time, money, resources, emotionally, every day it costs you more to make mistakes.

This is applicable both to a book that you have started to read and you do not like, a course that is not what you expected or a relationship that does not fulfill you..

• Accept the worst possible scenario. Assess what is the worst possible scenario, real, to make the decision. I clarify real, because you do not have to dramatize either, thinking that you are going to end up under a bridge. And as I said, it is important, because if you are prepared for the worst possible scenario, you accept it and you can face it, then you do not have to be afraid of making that decision..

• Stick with 2-3 alternatives. Instead of thinking of 50 possible options, try to narrow them down to 2-3 as much as possible. The fewer options we have, the less our mind will be scattered and therefore we will make better decisions.

• Use the "hot coffee" technique. If you get a very hot coffee on the table, what do you do? You wait, you let it cool for a few minutes and then you drink it. Well, with decisions that seem urgent, we can do the same.

Example: A coworker comes to you and tells you that you have to decide the date of the vacation NOW or your wife asks you if you want to accompany her shopping. Do not make the decision hot, wait a bit, cool down and take it.

Of course, be careful and do not get so cold that you become a procrastinator.

• We make the decision when we go into action. Action is the bridge that links thoughts to results. So in any decision, the process ends not when we think about it, but when we take action..

• Trust your intuition and creative ideas. People think that people who make decisions in a rational and thoughtful way are not usually carried away by instinct. Intuition is that thought, that feeling that it is in an unconscious plane and that it gives you different vibrations depending on what you think. On the other hand, according to studies on people who have to continually make decisions for work, more than 49% are carried away by intuition. They themselves say that intuition is trained. As you make more and more decisions, your intuition sharpens.

And they also dare to have creative ideas. With which, taking wise ideas is not at odds with letting yourself be carried away by intuition.

• Visualize the different options and see how your body feels. Your body has more information than your mind about whether the decision is right or wrong. The mind is an excellent servant, but it is a lousy master. The master must be the body, more specifically the heart.

In the book Power versus force, Dr. Hawkins proposes that one of the ways to access the wisdom that exists in our body is by testing things. So your body can test the decisions.

Be in silence for a while and observe how your body feels with each of the available alternatives. When we make the right decision our body feels expansion, when we make the wrong one, our body feels contraction. When you make the right decision, your body feels naturally good; When you take the wrong one, your body naturally feels bad. Or put another way, make the decision with which you feel best and have your mind operate in the service of that decision..

• Be quiet. It is difficult to make good decisions in our hectic day to day; from one side to the other, in the car, surrounded by people and noise. It is very easy to stop making decisions because of having to do things. A time of silence is the best thing that can come to make decisions.

A while in total silence. Go to the park, the beach or find a place where you can be quiet by yourself and where no one bothers you. No wi-fi, no phone, no watch.

It is time to take the role of before, with the decision that you did not know how to make and apply some of these techniques. You don't have to apply them all at once. Stay with the ones that you like the most or think that best suit your case.

I can only thank you for having come this far and I hope that all this information that I have given you will be useful. And if you dare, I'll wait for you in the comments and on the networks.