A person’s entire life consists of a constant need to make all kinds of decisions, from choosing products in a store to the global existential choice of one’s own life path and purpose. In the first case decision does not have much impact on a person's life.
But significant situations of choice often frighten and confuse a person, and it is in such circumstances that it is necessary to be able to adequately assess the current situation and take the necessary actions that will help make an informed choice. Decision making is a process that has a certain structure and characteristics, and if you want to know how to make the right decision, you should carefully analyze the information and use the tips that you will receive in this article.
Making a decision means choosing the most effective option actions from possible others, in the process of which thinking, emotions and will, character and temperament, and human motivation are involved. All of these factors can either help or hinder good decision making. Scientific research into the characteristics of information processing has shown that there are certain thinking tendencies that influence the decision-making process. Try to pay attention and remember what factors are inherent to you personally, so that during the decision-making process you can recognize them and abstract them.
- Search for supporting data. A person collects only those facts that influence the reinforcement of his own conclusions, while completely ignoring contradictory information.
- Inconsistency. Inability to act in a single direction when faced with a similar situation.
- Conservatism. The inability to quickly change your opinion and understanding of a person or situation, even in the presence of new facts about them.
- Novelty. Inability to consistently solve problems, since recent events occupy more time in the mind important place than the previous ones.
- Availability. The tendency to consider easily accessible facts relevant and valuable when in fact valuable information ignored.
- Selectivity. The tendency to evaluate a situation based solely on own experience and personal factors, based only on one’s position in life.
- False interpretation. The tendency to consider success the result of one’s skills and knowledge, and to blame other people or circumstances for failure. Such a vision does not allow a person to learn from his own mistakes and quickly gain life experience.
- Underestimating the situation. The tendency to build unjustified illusions and show excessive optimism contributes to the construction of unrealistic forecasts of the future, which act as factors influencing a decrease in personal effectiveness.
Learning to make informed decisions - 3 strategies
A modern classic of management, Canadian professor Henry Mintzberg believes that there are specific ways of making decisions, the choice of which is influenced by both specific situation, and these individual factors.
- “I do” means the process of making a decision without lengthy reasoning in an emergency situation, if the decision needs to be made quickly, but there is no time for the thinking process. In such situations, a person tends to make a decision using ready-made installations and options for action from past experience. To do this, you need to be able to extract this useful experience from experienced situations, working on negative thinking tendencies.
- "I think" is traditional way make a decision in Western culture. Here this process is carried out using a certain logical algorithm of actions, which includes:
- statement of the problem or goal;
- collection of information;
- clarifying the goal;
- selection of performance assessment parameters;
- development of alternatives;
- analysis and comparison of different options;
- assessing the consequences of different possibilities;
- decision-making.
- “Seeing” is an intuitive way of making decisions that manifests itself as a kind of illumination or insight. This method is the most correct if you need to take something very important. life decision, because the answers to all important questions are stored in a person’s subconscious; you just need to be able to use your capabilities correctly. In Gestalt psychology, there are 4 stages of the decision-making process using intuition:
- Preparation begins with collecting information, both at the level of thinking and including the emotional aspect;
- Incubation means a kind of meditative state, special concentration on a problem with the aim of deeply understanding and feeling it;
- Insight is the result of incubation, when that very insight occurs, and a person, with the help of deep meditative introspection, quickly realizes how to make the right decision;
- Checking the correctness of the decision made.
Video about how our brain makes choices:
Of course, the process of making a successful decision includes many factors, but the most important of them is having time to competently and deeply think about the choice at all levels. If you want to know how to learn how to make decisions in any situation, you should use the following tips:
- Take time to reflect. In the old days, sages would retire to a secluded place for a long time if they needed to make an important decision. Time is needed in order to realize how important this choice is for you and what consequences it may entail, so as not to act impulsively and thoughtlessly, because, unfortunately, a person often realizes the fate of a choice only after making it.
- Feel the situation. Often Difficult choice acts on a person as a stress factor, which creates a feeling of impasse and hopelessness. In this case, you should let go of difficult thoughts and try to trust your own feelings. We are not talking about fleeting, changeable emotions that should never be trusted; here you need to listen to your inner voice. For most people, reviving such feelings is not easy, so you should create special conditions, affecting the effectiveness of decision-making: light candles and sit in silence, sit comfortably and focus on some subject. The ways to create such an atmosphere are very individual, you can experiment and find your own way to achieve insight.
- Check the truth of your intentions. If you are faced with the process of making a serious decision, make sure of its true importance. Confidence in the right path is felt as a feeling of internal agreement, when there is no internal discomfort and the desire to “run away” from the problem. If the decision is thoughtful and mature, then the feeling of doubt does not arise. If you feel heaviness, depression and some confusion, then you should postpone making a decision for a while so as not to regret what you did in case of probable failure.
- Understand the cost of your decision. Any decision is definite choice, which brings with it new opportunities along with the need to give up something. Before making a final decision, you should evaluate how important new experience is in comparison with the past, whether it is worth losing something important on the way to new discoveries and achievements. Try continuing this phrase: “Now I will never...”. This exercise will help you, on the one hand, to understand everything important factors past experience, and on the other hand, will give you courage and strength to take responsibility for your future. Understand that everything in life has its price, you just need to learn how to set your own priorities correctly.
- Breathe life into your decision. To make a decision meaningful and significant, you need to charge it with a certain type of energy. There are two options here. In the first case, you choose one of the solution alternatives that does not suit you and promises a negative ending, and imagine the saddest scenario. Tell yourself: “If I do this, then all my life I will blame myself and worry because...” and list everything Negative consequences. In the second case, you should try to imagine all the most positive aspects of your possible choice in the future. In this way, you will quickly help yourself become more confident in the correctness and firmness of your intentions.
The German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm, in his brilliant work “Escape from Freedom,” argued that every decision is dictated not by internal beliefs, but by a person’s fear of isolation, which pushes each of us to follow public opinion, muffling the voice of true motives. That is why every decision you make must be made on the basis of deep conviction coming from the depths of your inner space.
There comes a time in every person's life when he some serious decision needs to be made, which can greatly change his fate. As a rule, if a person realizes the difficulty of his situation, then making such decisions is very difficult. It's easy to make fateful decisions when you don't think or when you don't understand what. What can a person who understands his situation and is faced with the need to make a difficult decision find support? I invite you to think with me about possible answers to this question.
Give yourself time
To make any decision you need time. And it’s good if we are for these purposes allocate it to ourselves. In the old days, sages could deliberately retire in order to better concentrate on some important issue. Now the pace of our lives is so great that stopping for a while and focusing on something important to ourselves is becoming increasingly difficult. And without this it is very difficult to make a decision. After all, it is so important to think, analyze your situation, find and be disappointed in certain solutions, reach a dead end, and then again look for a way out of it. All of these are integral components of searching and making a decision. And if we do not give ourselves time, then decisions can be impulsive and thoughtless, based on a fleeting mood or...
Reliance on feelings
Somehow it turns out that in difficult situations our . Or there are so many “smart” thoughts that you can get lost in them; or the wind begins to blow through your head and your mind refuses to work. In this case, relying on your own can help. own feelings. Only this should be relying not on momentary emotions(joy, anger, fear, etc.), but for deep feelings that live in each of us. It is very easy for someone to hear the voice of these feelings within themselves, and they only need to listen to themselves, but for others it is completely unknown how to hear the wave of their feelings in the general noise enveloping the soul. I will share with you the advice of one of my friends, who told me how he does it. Personally, I really liked his advice.
So, first you will need to find a quiet place where you can retire. Once you have done this, find something nearby that you can focus your attention on. It’s better if it’s some kind of shiny object (it’s easier to focus on this for a long time). Sit comfortably, fix your gaze on this object, and while sitting like this, begin to gradually listen to yourself. To do this, imagine that inside you there is emptiness, silence, nothing. Listen to this silence and emptiness. Don't let your thoughts distract you from this silence. And if thoughts distract you, then simply notice what they are about and let them go. Gradually, something will begin to appear in this emptiness. Notice what comes to the surface. These are the feelings we are looking for. They can appear in the form of images, vague premonitions, sensations in the body. As soon as you notice something in yourself, try to listen to it and give your experiences the opportunity to unfold.
This whole procedure can be figuratively represented as follows. You are walking through the forest and you need to go out onto a road along which cars drive. This road is far away. You are walking and behind the crunch of branches and leaves under your feet, you cannot hear in which direction this road is. You stop and freeze to listen where the road is. And you don’t hear it right away, but only after a short period of time, when the ear adjusts to silence and hearing becomes more acute. It’s the same with feelings. You need to stop first and stop everything internal work, and then listen to where the “sound of your feelings” comes from within you.
If you manage to hear the voice of your feelings, hear your true desires, then this can provide support and the direction in which you would like to move. And if such a general direction becomes clear, then making a decision turns out to be much easier (and sometimes it simply becomes self-evident).
Self-deception test
An important guideline when making a decision can be feeling of inner agreement. This feeling can appear in reverse form, in the form feelings, if you refuse a decision, or, on the contrary, internally insist on the need to make it. Usually this feeling is similar to some kind of internal discomfort, something gnawing inside and tormenting, as if you were betraying yourself. It is very important to ask yourself difficult situation: “Why am I here? Why should I do such and such? What is the meaning of my decision? If you don't know what decision to make, then it's worth asking yourself about the meaning of the situation in which you are forced to make a decision. Why did you end up in it? Why did you come to it? By finding answers to these questions, you can better understand why you find yourself in a decision-making or choice situation. And after that, you can ask yourself whether you are betraying what you came to this situation for, and yourself at the same time, by choosing this or that solution.
Fighting doubts
It must be said that doubts often arise when if the decision is made under pressure(internal or external). If the decision is hard-won and internally matured, then doubts and regrets do not arise. Well, if the choice has not yet matured internally, but it needs to be made as soon as possible, then confusion and a desire to find the “right” solution appear. In such a state, any choice will be wrong. Such a decision will always be followed by a trail of regrets and doubts. There is only one way out here - to think about what forces you right now (“as soon as possible”) to make a choice and make a decision. More precisely, what doesn’t suit you about it? And here it is better to think about what else can be done to remove this internal dissatisfaction without radically changing the situation.
Generally speaking, best advice here - don't put pressure on yourself. Don't force yourself to make a decision. Allow yourself not to accept it. Relax. Be like a samurai who, with an unshakable spirit, stands on the edge of a cliff and looks at the blue sky, enjoying its beauty. Take your time and allow yourself to look at the situation a little.
Acceptance of sacrifice
In any choice, in any decision you, one way or another, forced to give up something. There is something important and valuable that must be sacrificed by choosing one alternative or another. You should be prepared for this. In order to experience the victim more effectively (so to speak), it is necessary to approach it with the awareness of what exactly are you losing. When you clearly understand what you are giving up, then it is easier for you to survive the consequences of making such a difficult decision.
In order to better understand what you will have to give up, try to complete the following sentence within yourself: “I will never again...”. By talking inside yourself about everything that you have to part with, you can, on the one hand, better understand the importance of this or that alternative and, on the other hand, gain courage and willingness to take responsibility for the decision made. One way to help you accept this sacrifice is to realize what you are paying for in the form of the benefits you are giving up. This is your choice, and for every choice in life we must pay something and sacrifice something for the sake of something more valuable to us.
Final point
To give your decision more weight, you need to "pump him up with energy". How to do it? There are two options here. On the one hand, you can take one of the alternatives that you want to refuse and imagine the worst possible scenario. This can be done by saying to yourself the following words: “if I choose such and such, I will suffer from such and such all my life.” You can do it like this.
Or you can find the positive that is in the choice to which you are inclined, and keep it in your mind, in your imagination, keep it as a goal, as the lighthouse you want to lead your ship to. Can remember more often the good things you strive for, especially in moments of doubt and hesitation.
To be or not to be - that is the question! Perhaps Hamlet's words best describe a man who is so insecure. “He knows that he must kill his stepfather, and he hesitates only because the goal he is pursuing unconsciously frightens him,” explains Gestalt therapist Nifont Dolgopolov. - He strives for the ideal and is tormented by his own imperfections. And therefore cannot be completely satisfied with any of the decisions.”
At that moment when a person must give a definite answer and is unable to do so, he may be seized by real panic. “He feels awkward, annoyed, embarrassed, and feels guilty for stalling for time,” says Nifont Dolgopolov. “These feelings are aggravated and can develop into irritation and even anger if his partner pushes him or criticizes him.”
Paradoxically, the more he hesitates, the more confident he actually is about what to do. But he still waits for someone to make a decision for him. Such an unconscious strategy allows a person not to take responsibility for the consequences and for the choices made by others.
“I am learning to listen to my desires”
Ekaterina, 36 years old, doctor
“When I need to choose black trousers or a red dress in a store, I buy both. For several years now I have not been able to decide to leave the hospital to take care of private practice. I can't connect my life with the man I love because I can't answer simple questions: Should we live together or not? Should I have children or wait? As soon as I have to make a choice, I involuntarily begin to hesitate, stall for time, as if I’m waiting for someone to decide for me...
The situation became so unbearable that I decided to take a transactional analysis course. I'm working with my therapist to learn to listen to my desires, trying not to be guided by the opinions and tastes of my authoritarian mother. My journey of healing is to finally give free rein to my inner child, who still lives in me, who has been deprived of the right to speak since childhood.”
Fear of error
Those who find it difficult to make decisions for themselves suffer from self-doubt. They are afraid of making a mistake, because having made a choice in favor of, say, one dish in a restaurant, they have to refuse others that are presented on the menu.
“Lack of self-confidence becomes the main characteristic of a person if, from early childhood, when making decisions, he is accustomed to relying on the opinions of others - parents, friends or people authoritative for him,” explains Nifont Dolgopolov. - This behavior tactic develops in a child if his parents are authoritarian and adhere to a strict parenting style. They constantly evaluate the child, criticize his behavior, his preferences, make decisions for him... And he gradually stops relying on himself.”
It is pointless to give advice to an indecisive person, but it is also dangerous to make decisions for him, because then he will place all the responsibility on you. Another mistake is to reproach him for inaction: this will strengthen his negative attitude towards himself.
Help him figure out what is stopping him from being more decisive. Make it clear that he is clinging to self-doubt only because he is focusing on hypothetical losses rather than potential gains. Those who doubt themselves find it difficult to acknowledge the consequences of their indecisiveness. Draw his attention to what can happen if he never learns to make decisions on his own.
What to do?
Don't be afraid to take risks
Challenge yourself, others and win - learn to enjoy it. Every decision made, like every victory over ourselves, strengthens our self-confidence. Use the technique of model behavior: choose a brave, decisive person who, in your opinion, can serve as an example of success and willpower. And every time you make a decision, ask yourself: what would he do in my place?
Change position
You are wrong to confidently say about yourself: “I am not able to make this decision.” In fact, you are like Molière's Mr. Jourdain, who had no idea that he had been speaking in prose all his life until he was told about it. After all, from morning to evening you make many decisions every day! So change your perspective: be more attentive to the decisions you made on your own today.
How often do you hesitate when you need to make a firm decision? We think this happens all the time. How do we know this? They are like that themselves. Our generation has had the ground cut out from under its feet. When there is no foundation in the form of faith, a value system, it is always difficult to make a decision. You have to focus only on yourself, and not on “Big Brother”, who will gladly make decisions for you. On the one hand, living without such help is difficult and scary - you don’t know where you’re going, you don’t know what will happen tomorrow. On the other hand, when you have to think only with your own head, a strong and enterprising personality is born.
But even the mighty of the world However, they cannot always make a firm and meaningful decision. Sometimes you have to improvise, because a person by nature cannot analyze everything, predict everything - he cannot be sure of everything. It happens that time works against you, and circumstances work against your enemies. In moments like these, the worst thing you can do is freeze. Men do not fall into a stupor - even in an uncontrollable situation they maintain their sanity. Remember, even if you think that you have nothing to rely on, you are wrong. Your life, your experience, your knowledge, your ideas are something that cannot be taken away. This is your personal foundation, with the help of which we will teach you to make decisions - they will not always be correct, but at least they will be. And this is good.
Choose the lesser evil
Which will never become outdated. If you have to make an unpleasant decision, then assess the risks, write down the negative consequences of each decision, think about the likelihood of failure and choose the decision that will cause you the least problems. If sovereigns were at least occasionally guided by this simple rule, then there would be significantly fewer economic, political and military crises.
Act pragmatically
However, there will not always be a choice of the lesser evil. the best solution. Sometimes you need to focus all your attention on the benefits. Forget about moral principles, forget about fear and remember that risks may or may not be justified. If you have a real opportunity to benefit, then why not try it? It would seem that the advice is banal, but in Russia, in our opinion, they very rarely listen to it - the population has completely forgotten about the word “pragmatism”, preferring to it the words “stability”, “spirituality”, “duty”. No, if you want to live well, then you need to make decisions that will bring you money, influence, pleasure, in other words, benefit. This is pragmatism.
Jump without regrets
If you cannot make a pragmatic decision, there may be reasons for this. For example, you may not have enough time for this, or you simply cannot adequately assess the benefits and the risks associated with them. In this case, you need to trust your intuition or chance. Yes, you could be wrong - the chances are 50/50 - but it's better than waiting for the decision to be made for you. If you are afraid to trust your intuition, then there is a simple, but effective method make any decision - flip a coin. Thus, you entrust the fate of the decision to your luck, chance, fate. This relieves you of responsibility (on a psychological level) for making the wrong choice. Life is full of events when you just need to do and not think.
Operate with ideas
Previously, people trusted gods, holy books, and authorities. Many people still rely on such authorities when they think about what decision to make - this is normal. This behavior is inherent in human nature. The beauty of the 21st century is that today you can choose your own authorities, build an ideological concept yourself, which may not work for the entire society, but will work for you. If you have principles, your own understanding of honor or moral guidelines, then why not use them when you make your choice? Just ask yourself questions: “Am I doing the right thing?”, “Does my decision correspond to my ideas?” “Am I doing something wrong?” The answer will not always be clear, but one way or another you will be able to make a choice.
Simplify your choice
If we talk about everyday things, then a man should be simpler - as it was before. For example, if a man was choosing a shirt in a store, he looked at the size, color and, perhaps, shape - everything. Nowadays, due to the abundance of shirts, you cannot choose the right one, not because there is none, but because there are too many of them, and you get too hung up on things. The same goes for food and drink. If earlier there was coffee, today you will be offered mochaccino, cappuccino, macchiato, Americano, latte. You can choose something “suitable” with wild eyes, but the essence will be the same - you will choose coffee in any case. So why not immediately choose “just coffee”? Why spend a whole hour choosing a movie in a cinema when you can just see the poster and choose the first movie that comes along that more or less corresponds to your interests? Be simpler - and then life will stop being so complicated.
Do not do anything
The absence of a decision is also a decision. But only if we are not talking about fear of choice. When you are afraid to choose, then you always and everywhere make a bad decision, even if everything ends well for you. When you do not consciously choose and remain motionless, then you accept good decision, even if the outcome is sad. The point is awareness, not results.
Throughout our lives, we repeatedly have to make various decisions. And it often happens that we hesitate: should we do this or that way?Or we don’t even understand what to do... What to do in such cases? How to behave so as not to regret what you did later? In fact, there are many ways that will help you.
Method one. Reasoning.
It is suitable for people who think rationally and are used to reasoning with.
Try to calculate the consequences of this or that action. It's best to write down all the pros and cons on a piece of paper to make it clearer. Let's say you were offered new job, but you doubt whether to agree or not. Take a sheet of paper, divide it into two halves and on one half write down all the advantages of the proposed position, for example, “big salary”, “growth prospects”, “social package”, on the second - negative factors- “work far from home”, “irregular schedule”, “little information about this company”, etc.
Look at both halves of the sheet and count how many pros and cons you have. Now highlight what is your priority. After all, let’s assume that salary and career can completely compensate for some inconveniences. And it also happens that money and career are not the main thing for you, but you want to return home early and spend the weekend with your family. This method will simply help you visually put everything into categories, and this will make it easier to finally make a decision.
Method two. Intuition.
Suitable for people with an intuitive type of thinking. Listen to what. If you have been offered a job or, say, marriage, and the offer seems good, but for some reason you are not inclined to accept it, then maybe it’s not worth it? And, on the contrary, if your mind doubts, but your heart tells you to do just that, shouldn’t you follow its lead? If your intuitive premonitions have already been justified before, then that means you can completely trust them.
Method three. Try your luck.
This is for magically minded citizens. We're talking about different ones. Not even necessarily traditional ones, like cards or the I Ching. You can simply wish: “If the next candy I take out of this bag is green, then I will go to this place, and if it is red, then I will refuse the trip.” The main thing is to get the candies without looking.
You can also “tell fortunes” using a watch. Experts say that if on the dial, when you glance at it. there will be a “jackpot” - say, 11 hours 11 minutes, then you can rest assured: the upcoming meeting or undertaking will be successful for you. If the first two digits are greater than the second two, say 21 hours zero three minutes, you should not rush to make a decision. If, on the contrary, for example, the clock shows 15:39, it means that time is pressing for you: hurry up so as not to miss your chance.
Now special balls for decision-making have appeared on sale. You formulate a question, shake the ball and look at the answer in the window. Just remember that the ball does not predict the future, but only tells you what to expect and how best to act in a given situation.
Method four. Reading the signs of fate.
Suitable for those who are interested, if not in mysticism, then in psychology and. When thinking about a solution, pay attention to what is happening around you. Suppose you are planning to go somewhere, but you are not sure whether to go or not. And then suddenly the phones start ringing and you are bombarded with requests from friends, you lose the keys to your apartment and discover that the sole of your shoe has fallen off... Most likely, Providence is telling you: it’s not worth going to this meeting.
Or someone offers you cooperation, and his last name turns out to be the same as that of a person whom you knew many years ago and with whom you had some kind of unpleasant situation... Is it a coincidence?
Or you are planning a tourist trip, and suddenly you... strange coincidence, I come across a post on the Internet from a former client of that same travel company, who recalls with horror how he used its services...
They ask you a large sum into debt, and then the title of the note catches your eye: “Company N has gone bankrupt”...
You have had a stabbing pain in your lower back for three months now, but you can’t decide whether to go to the doctor. And then you catch a snippet of someone else’s conversation on the subway: “I did an ultrasound yesterday, they said there was a kidney stone...”
You are wondering whether to go on a date with the gentleman who invited you, and on the radio they sing: “Don’t go to meet him, don’t go. He has a granite pebble in his chest.” Why not a hint?
A “picture” can also carry a hint. For example, you are not sure whether you should connect your destiny with this particular person. And suddenly you see a couple of tender swans on the pond. Or, on the contrary, you meet a couple of cats desperately fighting on the street... Draw the appropriate conclusions.
Of course, you shouldn’t take literally every little thing for granted. But if a word or event caught your attention, stuck in your memory, or it clearly seemed to you that “it’s all about you,” that it’s connected specifically to your situation, then it makes sense to take it into account. Good luck with your decisions!
