Understanding habits that would help you make better life decisions is a skill that most individuals take for granted.
Do you feel stuck even when it comes to making small decisions about what you would wear to a job interview? Are you scared of making choices when it comes to your career, relationship and personal goals?
If you said yes to any of those statements, then you have some work to do towards achieving your dreams.
The key to living your best life and being the best possible version of yourself is linked to knowing how to make better life decisions. It would also save you a lot of time and stress.
It’s very easy to get scared when you are faced with a decision that could alter the direction of your life. You might even be tempted to ask for the assistance of maybe friends and family to help you make these decisions.
Before you continue reading this article, you have to learn to trust in your ability to make the right choices. Once you begin to believe in yourself, you would not need the approval of anybody.
Here are 11 ways you can start making right choices for you.
1. Overconfidence can lead you to bad decisions
One of the frequently occurring reasons why people make bad decisions is overconfidence.
Multiple studies have shown that overconfidence often make people to overestimate their knowledge and abilities hence starting up projects they can’t handle.
Are you a 100% sure that you would get a promotion that you decide to buy a new car on credit because you are expecting a huge bonus? What then happens when for some unforeseen reason you don’t get the promotion? You get into debt for the car you just bought.
Are you 90% sure that you would get admitted into your choice University, maybe Harvard, so you did not have any backup school prepared. If Harvard doesn’t work out, what happens next?
If you are overconfident in your decisions and things go wrong, you might end up in a difficult place.
Making a better decision would entail making a decision you are confident about while having back up plans in place for the instances things don’t work out as you envisioned.
Overconfidence also affects you ability for effective time management. Are you so sure that you would finish that report before the deadline? Sometimes we are overconfident in how much we can achieve in a certain time and end up missing the mark.
Good decision makers access the areas they might be overconfident about which could lead to a problem. Then they take the necessary steps to adjust not only their habits and behavior, but also their thinking as well.
2. Familiarity breeds comforts which can be risky
There is a possibility to become so familiar with a situation that you no longer see the risk that you might be placing yourself in.
You might have grown and gotten so accustomed to bad habits that put you in danger because you have gotten comfortable doing them.
There are two prominent examples that majority of us are guilty of getting too comfortable with. One is on our diet and the second in on road safety.
A lot of us never bother to eat any healthy meals during the day. We have gotten comfortable with grabbing a burger on our way to work, eating another junk food for lunch and beer and pizza for dinner.
Just because you are not seeing any immediate health effects, we get comfortable in this kind of unhealthy lifestyle. As time pass, we would begin to effects see the effects of this risk that we take in the form of health problems.
The second is road safety. We have gotten so comfortable with speeding and neglecting traffic laws because we have never been given a ticket or gotten involved in any accident.
With time we get so comfortable with speeding that we no longer see the risks involved. Sometimes we might even decide to take the speed up a notch, hence neglecting the danger that we are putting ourselves and other road users in.
It is important that we identify the habits that have become commonplace in our lives. Weed out the habits that have a negative impact on both the short and long term and try changing them.
Instead learn new positive habits that would improve the quality and longetivity of your life.
3. How you look at a problem matters
It is generally said that a problem shared is half solved. I also add that how you frame or look at a problem adds another 10 percent. Which means your problem is 60 percent solved.
The way you look at a problem plays an important role in how successful you would be in solving that problem.
Take a look at these statements and see how a problem can be framed:
Statement 1: 90 percent of women whom their mother died of cancer would not have cancer.
Statement 2: 10 percent of women whom their mother died of cancer would also have cancer.
The two statements say the same thing but give out two different feelings. When people hear statement two they get scared easily and might lose any hope that they might have had before.
So when you are faced with a problem or a decision you are about to make, how you frame it is very important. A slight change in outlook can determine how you would attack the issue on ground.
4. Do not overthink the pros and cons
When we are faced with new decisions especially tough ones, we sometimes spend to much time overthinking it.
When you spend so much time thinking about the potential rewards and risks, you might end up not even making the right decision or it would have already been too late.
While there is advantage in thinking about your decisions before you make them, over thinking it would only increase your stress levels and anxiety.
Instead of over thinking a problem, sleep on it instead. It is better to let it incubate subconsciously. You would be surprised with the progress you would make using this process.
It is also advisable that you engage in activities that would take your mind of the problem. This would allow your brain to work in the background and even come up with possible solutions.
5. Reflect on your mistakes
Did you invest money in that family friend’s business and made a huge loss? Did you overspend on your budget because you bought that new tech device you didn’t really need? No matter the decision, it is important that you spend time to reflect on your mistake.
An important habit to develop is reflecting on the choices that you made during the day before you go to sleep.
Did you make certain decisions that went wrong? Find out what what caused it to go awry. Look for the lessons that you can learn from that mistake and the steps you would take not to repeat them again.
Although I advice you to reflect on your mistakes, do not dwell on them for so long. It would only hurt you when you keep going back to it often. It is unhealthy for your mental health and could also increase your stress/anxiety levels.
How much time should you spend reflecting each day?
10 minutes is enough for you to reflect each day. Learn the lessons that are to be learned and make better life decisions moving forward.
6. Examine your beliefs
Once you have decided that something is true, it becomes a part of your beliefs.
The only negative thing about beliefs is that it takes more time to change them that the time it took you to create them. This is a psychological principle that is referred to as belief perseverance.
For example, you might believe that you are bad at having conversations in social gatherings so you avoid hanging out. You might also believe that people do not like you so you don’t try making any friends.
Beliefs like this can lead you away from having any health personal relationships with others.
Examine some of the beliefs you hold true because they might be leading you astray.
The best way to challenge your beliefs is by arguing for the opposites.
When you believe that people don’t like you, you argue for the opposite by listing the traits that you have that people could like about you.
Do you believe that you suck at relationships and do not go any dates, convince yourself on why you are an amazing person.
Arguing to opposites allows you to break down the negatives and allows you see a situation in a positive light hence changing the way you behave. You would begin to make better life decisions in the process.
7. Balance emotions with reasoning
When you are about to make a big decision, you would use both sides of your brain.
The two sides are divided into the left side that takes care of logical reasoning, while the right side is our emotional intelligence that affects our behavior….and also the important decisions that we would make through out our lives.
The right side of the brain is the home to emotions, intuition, creativity, art and music whereas the left side of the brain logic, language, reasoning, analysis and math.
When you start to make a decision it starts from the left side of the brain – the prefrontal cortex. Decisions made with just this area has no emotions in them. The lack of emotions would not allow the part of your brain called the nucleus accumbens (NAc) to be activated. When the NAc is not activated dopamine -the feel good hormone would not be released. What all this science talk means is that you would be unmotivated to get the work done.
So when you make decisions onwards, it is important that you balance both reasoning with emotions.
The left side would enable you to make the right choices while the right side would give you the required motivation to get the job done.
8. Visualize the success you would have
One of the secrets to learning how to make successful decisions is by visualizing what success means to you.Â
The steps to visualizing your success are pretty simple.
Step 1: Take a piece of journal or paper and write down what personal success means to you.
Step 2: The next step is to get into a relaxed position, preferably you lying down on your back. Close your eyes and imagine your future successful self.
How do you feel during your daydreaming? Do you see your future self filled with happiness and energy? Are you financially independent? Are you in loving relationship? Do you have a community of friends that supports you? Are you in your best shape?
You can then take notes of all these visualizations.
When you have a positive mental image of who you want to become, it becomes easier for you to work towards achieving those goals because you already believe that you can reach them.
Creative visualization is very important on your path to success. It should be part of your daily habits.
Remember not to spend all your day dreaming and not putting in the actual work.
9. Go with your gut feeling
Sometime you find yourself faced with different options and would not know which one to choose. In such an instance, the best tool at your disposal during decision making process is your intuition.
How do you learn to go with your gut feeling?
Just sit in a quiet place and relax your mind. Do not think about the pros and the cons. Forget about what could go wrong and just be.
Try to feel your feelings. Are you excited? Do you feel a tightness in your chest? Are you scared and anxious? Or do you feel relief?
A lot of research have shown that our intuitions normally hit us at a more intimate level inclining us towards the path we should follow before out consciousness catches up.
Making unconscious decisions i.e using our intuition increases the speed and accuracy of our decision making process. Both our conscious and unconscious thoughts come together to combine to dictate our habits and behaviors.
The best way to go is by looking into the depths of your heart and figuring out what you really want.
That hunch you feel when you are about to make decisions, start listening to it. Some call it your sixth sense. Learn to pay attention to it. It could help you in making better life decisions.
10. Asking others what they think can make it harder
There is no pointing asking others what they feel about the decision you are about to make. It would only make it harder because you get caught up in what other people feel it’s best for you.
If you ask 5 of your friends what they think you should do, you are most likely to get 5 different opinions. 5 extra opinions plus your own would only get you confused.
Confusion would decrease your chances of making the right choice tremendously.
You can discuss with people that your decision would affect directly. That is okay. But it also important to tell them confidently what you have decided. Not because you want their input but because you do not want them to be caught unawares.
11. Develop routines
The smartest people develop routines and this enables to reduce or entirely eliminate stress and in the process create more time for decision making.
By developing routines, they have processes in place to get them through crises instead of avoiding them. They get the car to the auto shop for servicing before it breaks down.
Smart people understands that it is best to make your biggest decisions in the morning before fatigue sets in later in the day. They know that fatigue can keep you from thinking straight and then making wrong choices.
Developing routines also help to improve your productivity and focus.