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How to make a choice? First, how do you know what you really want? Secondly, how to cope with emotions and every now and then rolling fear that “nothing will surely work out”?
In fact, our whole life is an endless decision-making process. Some are easy for us (for example, what to eat for breakfast or what scarf to wear with this dress), others require serious thought, and some can cause us serious stress and even bring us to a nervous breakdown. These experiences are the stronger, the more serious our decision promises to change our lives and the higher the cost of a possible mistake. And then we are afraid to make the wrong decision, we are afraid to take responsibility in case of a possible failure, we are afraid that our environment will not understand or condemn us. Finally, when making a decision, that is, making our choice, we always cut off some other possibility (or possibilities), which means that we inevitably lose something. It happens that this fear literally paralyzes us, and we refuse to decide something, but this is also a decision that carries with it all the same risks.
Can you make it easier for yourself to make a decision? Coach Kristina Solntseva tells how to (finally) make a choice:
Understand your desires. The first thing to ask yourself is: what do I really want? The answer is not always on the surface. For example, it may turn out that we take other people’s desires (parents, spouse, friends) as our own.
Define your goal. It is worth asking yourself the question: what result do I want to achieve in the long term? Will the decision I am making now bring me closer to it, or will it move me away? Sometimes we can win in the short term, but lose in the long term, and this should always be taken into account.
Set priorities. When making an important decision, it is helpful to make a list of all its pros and cons. If there are too many points on each side, select two or three of them that are most significant for us and strike a balance. Sometimes it may turn out that one fat minus outweighs several pluses. By and large, this is nothing more than a reflection on our values: what is most important to us in life? From them we should proceed.
Read more:
- Are we free in our choice?
Refuse black and white thinking. Sometimes it seems to us that we have only two solutions. For example, staying in an interesting job with a low salary or accepting an offer to take a boring but well-paid job. Trying to choose one of the two options, a person experiences real torment: he does not want to sacrifice creative joys, but at the same time he needs to provide for his family. In fact, the world around is much richer, and there are immeasurably more opportunities for us in it. In order to see them, we need to be flexible, that is, get out of the captivity of stereotypes.
Take responsibility. Our decisions are directly related to the ability to take responsibility for them. Ask yourself the question: am I responsible for my life or someone else? If I am, then this is a stronger position. Because then I manage my life and can change something for the better. And if we realize that most often we left someone else to decide for us, then is it not worth finally changing the strategy and trying to do something for ourselves?
Build on your strengths. For some of us, self-doubt prevents us from making decisions. In this case, it’s good to get away from the hustle and bustle, sit alone in silence, turning off the phone, try to calm down and concentrate on your strengths. Thus, we create a resource state that gives strength to make an adequate decision.
Understand your biases. Perhaps the fear that our environment will judge us prevents us from making the right decision. However, this is no more than our fantasies. We predict based on our stereotypes, developed over the years, although in fact we cannot predict the reaction of others. If we tend to fantasize, why not imagine the best possible scenario? A lot depends on how positively we look at the world, whether we are constantly waiting for some kind of trouble or counting on the best.
Read more:
- Svetlana Krivtsova: “We need to live by what is important”
Reflect on past failures. When making a decision, we may experience fear, remembering the wrong decisions we made before. In this case, it is worth mentally going back and thinking: why did I make a mistake last time? What exactly went wrong with that decision? How did I take it? Was it my decision or was I acting under someone else’s influence? Nelson Mandela said it well: “Never falling down is not the greatest merit in life. The merit is to rise every time. The experience of past failures can be invaluable to us if we can learn from it.