How to make a decision and change your life?
We all have problems and all successful people have one common trait: they know how to make a hard decision.
To be successful we need to solve big problems and by solving them, we will be rewarded.
Decision-making plays a key role in our personal and professional success.
Life itself is largely a matter of choice and decision.
“It’s estimated that the average adult makes about 35,000 remotely conscious decisions each day”.
Hence, our life appears as a crossroads where every decision we make can lead us down to a complete different path.
If we have to make a decision today that will impact our lives in the future, it is essential to focus on how to make the right decision and choices.
How to make a difficult decision: Know your values first
If we breach our sense of identity we will feel demotivated even depressed
One of the easiest ways to make the right decision is to know who you are and to understand your values. How will the decision affect you emotionally and psychologically? One way to figure this out is through our own emotions. Listening to your feelings indicates a comfort or discomfort in doing something. We can identify our values by analyzing what triggered the discomfort. Our values determine who we are. They explain why we act in a certain way and why we don’t.
For instance, let’s say Jack values security and Ben loves risks. They will act very differently due to their different values. Maybe Jack will invest more in bonds rather than stocks. Also, some people might prefer money to everything else.
In this sense, when we make a decision, our first mission is to determine our core values and be very clear about them. After that clarification, we let those values guide our decision because the strongest force in human personality is to stay true to ourselves. If we breach our sense of identity we will feel demotivated even depressed.
You control your life, not the horse: how to take responsibility
Take 100% responsibility for your life
In his book: The success principles: Jack Canfield emphasizes the first and foremost principle of success: Take 100% responsibility for your life. I heard a story about a man riding a horse, all in a hurry. People around asked him: “where are you going?”. The man replied: “I don’t know, ask the horse!”. I hid my smirk when I first heard it and directly understood the moral of the story. Yes, most people don’t know that they have the power to control the horse. Instead, most of us just assume that the horse will lead us to wherever it wants: the Niagara Falls Syndrome as Tony Robbins would describe it.
The main task of being a responsible person is to stop blaming. We have to make decisions and we will be in control. I do believe that we have power over ourselves first, then over the events simply by making conscious choices. A better life awaits only if we assume that we can influence it with the decisions we take starting from today.
Does your life have a direction?
Adjust the course of your life
Knowing that we are 100% responsible for our lives, our next step is to give it a meaning. It’s been said that life itself doesn’t have a meaning but we can always create a meaning to our lives. This includes knowing our core values in life.
Giving our life a meaning boils down to answering a few questions: what do I love doing? Who do I want to become? What do I want to do in my life? What do I want to accomplish?
Once we answer these questions, we can transform the answers into personal goals. Who do you want to become?
You see, when you have a direction to follow, it’s easier to adjust the course of your life: did your actions lead you there or on the contrary, were you sidetracked?
Whether we follow that direction or not will determine how to make the right decisions in our lives.
Trust the process
Once you made the decision, stick to it and persevere! I love to make a decision. I believe that this decision will either be a good one or a lesson that will help me make a better one in the future. So no matter what, just let go and trust the Universe!
Why you need to make decision often
Because you feel more in control of your life: I love to cross all of the decisions I made and accomplished
I sometimes got scared when I’m about to make a decision. Yet, with hindsight, all these decisions made me who I am today.
Taking a conscious decision increases your self-esteem. You know you are responsible for your own actions and the results that come from them. Never would you blame the situations but take full-responsibility of what happens. In this sense, you respect yourself more.
There are no good or bad choices, only choices to be made.
If you have to make a hard decision and hesitate what to do, I invite you to read another article I wrote about it: How to make a decision: the regret minimization system