Life is all about making decisions. Whether they are as small as when to do laundry or what to order for breakfast or as big and life-altering as whether you should quit your job, or should you marry them, or is it right to pursue this course – the process is almost always exhausting and stressful.
Being decisive never comes easy. Most of us continue to mull over multiple options, the timings of our choices, personal circumstances, financials, and every other related or unrelated thing. We doubt, analyze, seek advice, and overanalyze again and again, all in the hopes of making one perfect decision that we will not end up regretting.
Any random decision can alter the course of our lives. The lack of certainty and fear of what lies ahead restricts us from making important life choices. Being indecisive puts you at a real risk of losing out on transformative opportunities and leaves you with life-long pangs of regret. This is why learning how to be more decisive in life is an important life skill and the key to success and growth.
To help you get started on this journey of learning how to become more decisive in life, we have compiled a list of the nine most useful tips to aid decision-making. So, if you are a chronic overthinker or someone looking to become more confident in decision-making, this is the perfect place for you. Let’s dive in.
Effective Solutions On How To Be More Decisive In Life
1. Use the decision matrix methods.
The first step in learning how to be more decisive in life includes using the decision matrix process. Whenever you come to a point where you need to weigh between multiple options, simply use the age-old pros and cons method. Use a piece of paper to scribble down the possibilities and outcomes of each decision properly. Even if you might not end up getting a clear choice, this process will help you identify what is actually important to you and how these choices stack up against your priorities.
The decision matrix might look like a pretty standard method, but you will be surprised at how much it helps in learning how to be more in life. The only important condition in this method is to practice complete honesty.
2. Analyze, but don’t overanalyze.
We have all heard the age-old saying, ‘look before your leap.’ Yes, an integral step in learning how to be more decisive in life is mulling over your options and evaluating them properly. But to continue being stuck at that stage is definitely counterproductive. Sometimes, you just have to take that leap of faith. You have clearly thought out the worst possible outcomes. This means you are ready to do everything in your power to get things done right. But if you keep holding yourself back because of your fear of making mistakes or not being good enough, you will sadly lose out on many important things. This is why making decisions and putting things into action is imperative.
3. Understand your biases and values.
Most of our decisions are essentially about weighing values – financial value, social value, emotional value, and so on. Therefore, an integral step in becoming more decisive is evaluating your choices against your values. Use this process to align your values with your short and long-term decisions.
Now, this process of weighing values is tricky. This is because all of us have inherent biases. This bias restricts our long-term vision and makes it extremely difficult to look past our fears.
Therefore having a clear vision of your values and allied biases can help you make much more informed and easy decisions in life.
4. Use the ‘fly on the wall’ technique.
Do you realize how easy it is to give relationship advice to your best friends but challenging to implement it or make those decisions in your own life?
This simple yet important feeling will help you learn how to be more decisive in life. Researcher Igor Grossmann found that people could think much more rationally regarding their friends’ relationships than when asked to mull over personal ones. He also found that people who thought of their relationship from a third-person perspective were able to act much more rationally than others.
This research highlights the importance of changing perspectives in aiding decision-making. Think of yourself as a fly on the wall (as a third-person or observer with respect to your life) while trying to make decisions in life. When you take a step back and look from a different perspective, many things start to make sense. This fresh perspective will empower you to make much more rational and informed decisions.
5. Take your time.
Learning how to be more decisive in life is starkly different from making quick decisions. Many assume quick decision-making is the right way out of their rut. However, research by Columbia University Medical Center found that taking a pause can result in much better life decisions.
Taking your time to make decisions saves you from facing undue damage in the future. Especially if you feel your anxiety rising and your judgments being clouded by nervousness, it is definitely not a good time to make decisions. Go for a walk, and distract yourself a bit rather than making any hasty choice. An integral learning in how to become more decisive is to never react as per our imaginary time clock.
6. Pursue growth and not perfection.
To become successful in life, you not only have to learn how to be more decisive in life but also how to get go of the hopeless pursuit of perfection. Accepting that the future is unknown for all of us and that not being 100% sure about your choices is normal is a great way to start. It is important to understand that the pressure of being perfect will not help you be more decisive or make good choices. On the contrary, it will put you in a state of constant fear and anxiety and restrict your ability to act appropriately.
Therefore it is essential to accept that most decisions in your life will be a matter of risk. Some will pay off, while many will obviously not. But the life decisions that fail you are not a symbol of shame. They are opportunities for you to learn, grow, and flourish.
7. Address your fears.
A significant part of the habit of indecisiveness stems from the fear of making terrible life choices. Therefore in order to learn how to become more decisive in life, try to understand and address your fears. A good way to handle your insecurities and fears is to take two scenarios – one that includes the worst possible outcome of your choice and the other that consists of the consequences of not making a choice at all. This simple exercise will teach you that while your decisions can go sideways, your indecisiveness can cause unwanted outcomes too. This belief of having risks on either side might help you become more decisive in life.
8. Embrace the possibility of failure.
This is probably one of the most important tips on this list. How often have you backed off from making a decision out of the fear of failing? To make any decision in life, you need to embrace and accept the possibility of failure.
In fact, we must learn to normalize failure as part of our life. It is the process that makes you grow and make better decisions eventually. So the next time you make a life decision, and it turns out to be an absolute disaster, it is okay. No one makes perfect decisions all the time, and that is okay. The important thing is that you acted, and that’s clearly a big win.
Note to self: Think of failure as a life lesson.
9. Learn to let go of regret.
One of the hardest parts of learning how to be more decisive in life is the constant wish that you had made a different choice in the past. Most people who struggle to make decisions have issues letting go of the regret attached to their bad choices. Failures after failures convince them to analyze and overanalyze their life choices constantly. Eventually, they are paralyzed on almost any occasion of decision-making.
In order to learn decision-making, you must let go of this regret and build faith in yourself. Learn to forgive yourself for your past mistakes. Practice self-compassion while dealing with yourself. It is good to analyze the aftermath of your decision. But it is also important to accept that you did the best you could in your situation.
Conclusion:
Being decisive in life allows you to take control of your life, grab potential opportunities, and build self-confidence. However, the process of making decisions is not always an easy one. It is, in fact, a life skill that you must consciously work on in order to build. Carefully analyzing your options, taking the required time, addressing your fears, and letting go of regret are some tips on how to be more decisive in life.
Being decisive requires a lot of mental strength and patience. An average person makes more than 30,000 decisions every day. All this decision-making can eventually catch up to you and drain your energy. This condition is referred to as decision-making. It can often make you act in haste or not act at all, causing you to lose out on precious opportunities. To learn how to combat decision fatigue, click here.
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