How to make good decisions

If you want to know how to make good decisions, start by asking yourself how clear and focused your decisions feel? Do you struggle to understand what you really want? How well do you listen to your “gut”? How many of your decisions are made based on what you should do, in spite of any resistance you may feel?

There are three key pieces to making easy and intentional decisions:

• You honor your values.

You will feel internal conflict, if the decision is in conflict with your values. The conflict may show up as passive anger or resentment, a feeling of shame, or destructive behaviors. These feelings and behaviors are signals that something isn’t working for you. You can use your values as a lens to understand how or why a decision feels difficult. If the decision doesn’t honor your values, ask yourself how you can shift to ensure that value gets met.

There are also times when a decision honors your values, but juxtaposes two dominant values against each other. For example, if service to others is a value, but so is adventure, then choosing to serve someone in the same way everyday will feel like a chore, and you may struggle to make the decision to keep serving others. This will feel confusing because your value is service to others. Where you know your most dominant values in order of priority, it will be much easier to know how to shift to make the situation work for you. In this instance, you would choose to vary how you support others.

• You listen holistically to yourself.

You integrate emotional and intuitional information into your decision. Where you notice yourself procrastinating on making a decision by numbing with alcohol or tv or busyness, take a moment to be still and really hear what you want. Notice I didn’t say what you should want. When you acknowledge and validate what your heart and gut are saying, you can use that information to help you make a purposeful decision that works for you. Where you ignore what you want or you invalidate your desires saying you shouldn’t want that, that repressed emotion doesn’t simply leave. The resentment, the low-grade anger, the sadness, or the disappointment stays in your subconscious and colors the way you see the world, as well as all decisions you (don’t) make. Listening to yourself doesn’t necessarily mean you will make a decision that’s different than what you feel you should do, but it means you understand in advance how you will feel about it and you can proactively put in place what you need to help make it work for you.

• You understand what compels you, what connects you to a higher purpose.

Do you have a longer life plan? Or do you shrug and say you don’t need one? If you don’t know what you are working toward, making decisions will be tricky. Prioritizing one thing or another or understanding how a choice will impact you later will feel impossible if you don’t have a goal. How much does your lack of a life plan relate to your inability to create one that compels you? Taking the time to get to know your self – identifying your values in order of priority, defining a framework of core beliefs that support your values, understanding and asking for your needs to be met – creates a foundation from which you can map out a life plan.

Once you are tapped into your foundational self, you can begin to define how THAT self engages with the different areas of life. Divide life into slices like a pizza and write about how your foundational self shows up in career, relationships – intimate, familial, and social, finances, health and wellness, spirituality, and fun and enjoyment.

Struggling to define these slices or feel that you aren’t creating something that truly inspires you? Dreaming can be hard if you feel stuck or trapped in a situation, so start by defining what you want to be different. Then look at why and how you want it to be different as a way to help you define what different looks like.

Pointing to what you don’t like and doesn’t work is easy. Defining and actioning what you do like is much harder, but worth the effort because where you face challenges in life, your life plan functions like a North Star, your light in the darkness, and creates a reason for you to overcome the obstacle and keep going.

If this seems logical, but impossible, schedule a free call to see how we can partner to help you learn to make intentional authentic decisions that serve you.

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With thanks to Mario Nevado for the powerful artwork! Get it here: www.marionevado.art.