Have you ever been torn between two options where both seem like the right choice?
Have you ever racked your brain trying to choose between two solutions to a difficult problem?
Have there been moments in your life when you find yourself at a ‘crossroads’ situation – where the decision you make will change your life forever?
Decision making.
We do it every day.
From something as trivial as deciding what to eat for lunch to those life-changing megaton decisions like whether to quit your job or what to do in a struggling relationship, choices are never easy.
If you’re lucky enough to be born in a developed country where you have an abundance of options with regards to what to study, which career path to choose, who to date and when to settle down and what else to buy… you’re blessed with the unfortunate “burden” of having to make more decisions.
Decision making can be really exhausting.
Decision fatigue is a very real phenomenon, especially in leadership.
The higher up you are on the career ladder, the more (quality) decisions you’re expected to make.
Leaders like Mark Zuckerberg and Barack Obama are known to limit their clothing options in their wardrobe so that deciding what to wear doesn’t ‘wear’ them down further with decision fatigue.
Pun intended.
I’m going to talk about those big, hairy life decisions.
Decisions like what to major in university, which solution will be the best to solve a big business challenge or whether you should make that career switch.
These kinds of decisions have bigger implications or consequences on our lives, which is why we naturally take a longer time to think them through.
But taking more time to think things through rarely makes us feel better about the choice we make.
Sometimes, the longer or more thoroughly we analyze the two options, the more agonizing the process can be!
Furthermore, life will rarely ever give us all the time we need to make the right choice. The biggest decisions are usually made on a deadline. And while we can wish we had more time to think it over, time is not always what we need.
So are there strategies for us to make better quality decisions?
Should You Trust Your Head Or Your Heart?
Traditionally when we think about decision-making, we think about two main ways: using the ‘head’ or using the ‘heart’.
The first is to use our heads.
This is the logical, reasonable way. The most common method is to draw a table and weigh the pros and cons between the two options.
We do a cost-benefit analysis of what our choices are. Or we take into consideration the advantages and disadvantages.
But here’s the problem: despite how rationally we believe we have come to a conclusion, there’s always an underlying feeling that the other option might be the best.
The other option may be what our ‘heart’ says.
It’s a quiet whisper. A little nudge from the inside. And it keeps resisting our inclination to go with the logical choice.
Some people frame it as intuition.
Even after listing down all the pros and cons, there’s always this one option that ‘feels better’. So we end up going with our gut.
It even shows in the phenomena of ‘buyer’s remorse’. We see something at the store that strikes us, and we end up spending a chunk of our salary, buying on impulse.
After buying it, we feel awful and then find ways to justify our purchase with reasons like “it was on sale, so I had to” or “I haven’t treated myself in a long time”.
I’ve heard people say that if you ‘follow your intuition’ or ‘gut-feeling’, you always make the right choice.
But there’s really no way to prove it.
As someone who’s very reliant on my intuition, I’m very used to making ‘gut-feeling’ choices.
And yet I still regret about one-third of decisions I make.
Last year I made a big personal investment based on ‘gut-feeling’, and it turned out to be completely pointless.
Today I’m still reeling from regret by paying monthly instalments. And every time I pay I just tell myself I’m shouldering the cost of a ‘very expensive life lesson’.
Still justifying my emotional decision with logic.
I’m sure we’ve all had those ‘very expensive life lessons’ in our lives. Didn’t they all seem like a good idea at the time?
The question is: could you have avoided these painful mistakes if you had a better approach to decision making?
Here’s my take on it.
No matter how foolproof your decision-making strategy is, you will never fully know if it was the ‘best decision’.
Your ‘head’ may not be always right. Your ‘heart’ may not be always right.
You only feel like it was the right choice if it turned out really, really good.
Conversely, you’ll say it was a bad choice if you end up ‘suffering’ or when the costs end up outweighing the benefits.
So instead of racking your brain trying to figure out the correct answers in life (there are none, by the way), focus on gaining clarity during the decision-making process.
Because you can never be ‘too clear’ about the decision you make.
When I say clarity, I don’t necessarily mean feeding your mind with more data.
While that could work for some people who need to consume more information to make decisions.
But for others, it could just convolute the mind with more things to consider.
Instead, what you’re going for is INNER CLARITY.
Once you are done with this process, you may feel a certain sense of ‘lightness’ or even a ‘nudge’ towards a particular direction.
This is a sign that you’ve achieved inner clarity, and it comes when you have merged both the rational and emotional in your decision-making process.
Here are some strategies that might work for you:
2 Strategies To Find Inner Clarity In Decision Making
Strategy #1: Write, write and write.
The simplest and best way to find clarity of mind is to express your thoughts on paper.
Grab a sheet of paper and just write.
Write about the situation. Write about the options you have.
Write about the pros, the cons, the possible consequences of each.
Write about WHY you are making this decision, and why does that matter.
Write about what is it that you’re trying to achieve. And write about what is motivating you to take this path.
Write about what the future might look like if you take one route. And write about what the future might look like if you take the other.
Write about how you would feel after you might take that option. Write about how you would feel a week or a year or ten years after you take that option.
Forget about writing in proper grammar – just let your thoughts flow and pour onto the paper in one continuous stream.
This exercise is great because you’re fully working out your left-brain (logic and reasoning) and right-brain (intuition and feelings) as you write freely.
You might find this process to be very cathartic. You’ll feel relieved that you ‘released’ all your thoughts on paper and you can see them.
Now, read and re-read what you wrote and see if you’re at a place where the solution is clear to you now than before.
If it is, take that path.
Strategy #2: Use Powerful Questioning Techniques.
As a coach, my job is to engage my client with powerful questioning techniques to help them find the answers within.
If you have access to a coach, I would highly recommend having a coaching conversation to aid you in the decision-making process.
A coach can provide you with a different perspective or challenge you to think beyond your usual frame of mind.
But if you don’t have a coach, then you could use the following questions as a ‘cheat sheet’ for you to coach yourself to make the best decision.
So if you’re torn between two options, what you do is you write down these choices and ‘cross-check’ them one-by-one to this list of 7 questions.
I’d highly recommend you writing down your answers on a sheet of paper as you do this.
So for example, you have Option A and Option B.
You start by going through this set of questions with Option A.
Here are the questions:
Q1: How does choosing Option A help me to become the best version of myself?
Q2: How does choosing Option A align with my personal values?
Q3: What’s the best thing that can happen if I choose Option A?
Q4: What’s the worst thing that can happen if I choose Option A?
Q5: Who benefits if I choose Option A?
Q6: If I never took Option A for the rest of my life, would I regret it?
Q7: If I choose Option A and it turns out to be a complete failure, would I regret that failure?
Then after going through those 7 questions for Option A, do the same for Option B.
These questions are powerful because they will get you thinking both specific and abstract, logically and emotionally.
It’s possible that one of the options may become blindingly obvious to you, even before you finish this exercise.
You’ll find inner clarity not just in the decision you’re making, but you may also discover some new insights about yourself along the way.
Pro-Tip: Make sure you have a glass of plain water (or your favourite beverage, although I would still recommend plain water) as you do this process.
You may find yourself getting thirsty as you convert clear water into clear thinking.
—
Understand: there is no such thing as the right or wrong decision.
Instead of mulling endlessly over your thoughts, live sensibly and seek wisdom in everything that you do.
Be truthful to yourself as you make decisions. Consult someone you trust to help you sort out your mental clutter.
Know that as much as we are all concerned with the outcomes, the process of decision making itself may be more important than the eventual choices.
Hope this process helps you make solutions that not just light your soul on fire, but illuminate the paths you take in life!
Summary
Despite how rationally we think through our choices, we almost always make decisions based on our emotions.
If you’ve heard the advice ‘follow your intuition and you’ll always make the right choice’, there’s really no way to prove it.
Instead of wracking your brain trying to figure out the correct answers, focus on gaining inner clarity during the decision-making process.
Strategy #1: Write, write and write. Write as elaborately as possible on the situation and the choices you are making.
Strategy #2: Use powerful questioning to help you make the best decision. Refer to the 7 questions above.
Understand: there is no such thing as the right or wrong decision.
Instead of mulling endlessly over your thoughts, live sensibly and seek wisdom in everything that you do.
Have you ever been torn between two options where both seem like the right choice?
Have you ever racked your brain trying to choose between two solutions to a difficult problem?
Have there been moments in your life when you find yourself at a ‘crossroads’ situation – where the decision you make will change your life forever?
Decision making.
We do it every day.
From something as trivial as deciding what to eat for lunch to those life-changing megaton decisions like whether to quit your job or what to do in a struggling relationship, choices are never easy.
If you’re lucky enough to be born in a developed country where you have an abundance of options with regards to what to study, which career path to choose, who to date and when to settle down and what else to buy… you’re blessed with the unfortunate “burden” of having to make more decisions.
Decision making can be really exhausting.
Decision fatigue is a very real phenomenon, especially in leadership.
The higher up you are on the career ladder, the more (quality) decisions you’re expected to make.
Leaders like Mark Zuckerberg and Barack Obama are known to limit their clothing options in their wardrobe so that deciding what to wear doesn’t ‘wear’ them down further with decision fatigue.
Pun intended.
I’m going to talk about those big, hairy life decisions.
Decisions like what to major in university, which solution will be the best to solve a big business challenge or whether you should make that career switch.
These kinds of decisions have bigger implications or consequences on our lives, which is why we naturally take a longer time to think them through.
But taking more time to think things through rarely makes us feel better about the choice we make.
Sometimes, the longer or more thoroughly we analyze the two options, the more agonizing the process can be!
Furthermore, life will rarely ever give us all the time we need to make the right choice. The biggest decisions are usually made on a deadline. And while we can wish we had more time to think it over, time is not always what we need.
So are there strategies for us to make better quality decisions?
Should You Trust Your Head Or Your Heart?
Traditionally when we think about decision-making, we think about two main ways: using the ‘head’ or using the ‘heart’.
The first is to use our heads.
This is the logical, reasonable way. The most common method is to draw a table and weigh the pros and cons between the two options.
We do a cost-benefit analysis of what our choices are. Or we take into consideration the advantages and disadvantages.
But here’s the problem: despite how rationally we believe we have come to a conclusion, there’s always an underlying feeling that the other option might be the best.
The other option may be what our ‘heart’ says.
It’s a quiet whisper. A little nudge from the inside. And it keeps resisting our inclination to go with the logical choice.
Some people frame it as intuition.
Even after listing down all the pros and cons, there’s always this one option that ‘feels better’. So we end up going with our gut.
It even shows in the phenomena of ‘buyer’s remorse’. We see something at the store that strikes us, and we end up spending a chunk of our salary, buying on impulse.
After buying it, we feel awful and then find ways to justify our purchase with reasons like “it was on sale, so I had to” or “I haven’t treated myself in a long time”.
I’ve heard people say that if you ‘follow your intuition’ or ‘gut-feeling’, you always make the right choice.
But there’s really no way to prove it.
As someone who’s very reliant on my intuition, I’m very used to making ‘gut-feeling’ choices.
And yet I still regret about one-third of decisions I make.
Last year I made a big personal investment based on ‘gut-feeling’, and it turned out to be completely pointless.
Today I’m still reeling from regret by paying monthly instalments. And every time I pay I just tell myself I’m shouldering the cost of a ‘very expensive life lesson’.
Still justifying my emotional decision with logic.
I’m sure we’ve all had those ‘very expensive life lessons’ in our lives. Didn’t they all seem like a good idea at the time?
The question is: could you have avoided these painful mistakes if you had a better approach to decision making?
Here’s my take on it.
No matter how foolproof your decision-making strategy is, you will never fully know if it was the ‘best decision’.
Your ‘head’ may not be always right. Your ‘heart’ may not be always right.
You only feel like it was the right choice if it turned out really, really good.
Conversely, you’ll say it was a bad choice if you end up ‘suffering’ or when the costs end up outweighing the benefits.
So instead of racking your brain trying to figure out the correct answers in life (there are none, by the way), focus on gaining clarity during the decision-making process.
Because you can never be ‘too clear’ about the decision you make.
When I say clarity, I don’t necessarily mean feeding your mind with more data.
While that could work for some people who need to consume more information to make decisions.
But for others, it could just convolute the mind with more things to consider.
Instead, what you’re going for is INNER CLARITY.
Once you are done with this process, you may feel a certain sense of ‘lightness’ or even a ‘nudge’ towards a particular direction.
This is a sign that you’ve achieved inner clarity, and it comes when you have merged both the rational and emotional in your decision-making process.
Here are some strategies that might work for you:
2 Strategies To Find Inner Clarity In Decision Making
Strategy #1: Write, write and write.
The simplest and best way to find clarity of mind is to express your thoughts on paper.
Grab a sheet of paper and just write.
Write about the situation. Write about the options you have.
Write about the pros, the cons, the possible consequences of each.
Write about WHY you are making this decision, and why does that matter.
Write about what is it that you’re trying to achieve. And write about what is motivating you to take this path.
Write about what the future might look like if you take one route. And write about what the future might look like if you take the other.
Write about how you would feel after you might take that option. Write about how you would feel a week or a year or ten years after you take that option.
Forget about writing in proper grammar – just let your thoughts flow and pour onto the paper in one continuous stream.
This exercise is great because you’re fully working out your left-brain (logic and reasoning) and right-brain (intuition and feelings) as you write freely.
You might find this process to be very cathartic. You’ll feel relieved that you ‘released’ all your thoughts on paper and you can see them.
Now, read and re-read what you wrote and see if you’re at a place where the solution is clear to you now than before.
If it is, take that path.
Strategy #2: Use Powerful Questioning Techniques.
As a coach, my job is to engage my client with powerful questioning techniques to help them find the answers within.
If you have access to a coach, I would highly recommend having a coaching conversation to aid you in the decision-making process.
A coach can provide you with a different perspective or challenge you to think beyond your usual frame of mind.
But if you don’t have a coach, then you could use the following questions as a ‘cheat sheet’ for you to coach yourself to make the best decision.
So if you’re torn between two options, what you do is you write down these choices and ‘cross-check’ them one-by-one to this list of 7 questions.
I’d highly recommend you writing down your answers on a sheet of paper as you do this.
So for example, you have Option A and Option B.
You start by going through this set of questions with Option A.
Here are the questions:
Q1: How does choosing Option A help me to become the best version of myself?
Q2: How does choosing Option A align with my personal values?
Q3: What’s the best thing that can happen if I choose Option A?
Q4: What’s the worst thing that can happen if I choose Option A?
Q5: Who benefits if I choose Option A?
Q6: If I never took Option A for the rest of my life, would I regret it?
Q7: If I choose Option A and it turns out to be a complete failure, would I regret that failure?
Then after going through those 7 questions for Option A, do the same for Option B.
These questions are powerful because they will get you thinking both specific and abstract, logically and emotionally.
It’s possible that one of the options may become blindingly obvious to you, even before you finish this exercise.
You’ll find inner clarity not just in the decision you’re making, but you may also discover some new insights about yourself along the way.
Pro-Tip: Make sure you have a glass of plain water (or your favourite beverage, although I would still recommend plain water) as you do this process.
You may find yourself getting thirsty as you convert clear water into clear thinking.
—
Understand: there is no such thing as the right or wrong decision.
Instead of mulling endlessly over your thoughts, live sensibly and seek wisdom in everything that you do.
Be truthful to yourself as you make decisions. Consult someone you trust to help you sort out your mental clutter.
Know that as much as we are all concerned with the outcomes, the process of decision making itself may be more important than the eventual choices.
Hope this process helps you make solutions that not just light your soul on fire, but illuminate the paths you take in life!
Summary
Despite how rationally we think through our choices, we almost always make decisions based on our emotions.
If you’ve heard the advice ‘follow your intuition and you’ll always make the right choice’, there’s really no way to prove it.
Instead of wracking your brain trying to figure out the correct answers, focus on gaining inner clarity during the decision-making process.
Strategy #1: Write, write and write. Write as elaborately as possible on the situation and the choices you are making.
Strategy #2: Use powerful questioning to help you make the best decision. Refer to the 7 questions above.
Understand: there is no such thing as the right or wrong decision.
Instead of mulling endlessly over your thoughts, live sensibly and seek wisdom in everything that you do.