Making Of a decision
As easy as it may sound for some people to make a decision, it actually is quite a frightening task for many others. Especially, if the decision they make can have a huge impact on the rest of their life. The most frightening thing here is not the fear of actually making the wrong decision, albeit it is a scary thought as well, but rather the waste of the time for which you are unable to make a decision let alone coming to terms with it.
Most of the times, instead of actually making a decision, you will only find yourself contemplating about what you should do and then putting this though off to the future version of yourself. You will find yourself getting engaged in other meaningless tasks which could have easily been done after making your decision as well. The reason for that is simply because you are scared of the commitment it takes to stay true to your decision and work for it. You might also know what the correct decision is in your heart, but you just do not want to admit to it yet and keep spending more and more time on other things. After you have done this a couple of times, you will realize that the correct decision was what you already knew in your heart from the start, however, you will also then realize that you have already wasted a lot of time and it is now even harder to take the road that your decision points towards.
For all the times you decided to put off your decision, you actually got further away from actually walking towards your goal. Not only that, but all the time you spent on those tasks in between were nothing more than distractions for you as you were always afraid of the looming thought of making that decision. So, what you do end up with at the end is a lot of time wasted which made reaching your destination even harder, a lot of things done which were not properly enjoyed for what they were but rather only seen as a distraction until the thought to make the decision resurfaced again, and last but certainly not the least, the regret that comes with the things mentioned earlier.
Now that we have a picture of what can go wrong while making a decision, lets see what we can do to avoid it.
Learn to be decisive
The first thing you should aim for is to become more decisive in your life. I know you are wondering that this was exactly what you had issues with so how can it be the first thing to learn. Let me tell you that the thing you had problems with was not about being decisive or not, but rather related to you overanalysing things to include unrealistic pros and cons in your calculations. This lead to you delaying this now dreadful task and wasting time. Being decisive is much more simpler. Instead of procrastinating and putting of the decision making to the future version of yourself, try to weigh the pros and cons of the decision early and force yourself to engage in other tasks only after making the decision. This allows you to make the decision early based on what you already feel is correct rather than swinging back-and-forth only to waste time.
Being decisive is not just weighing the pros and cons and making a decision promptly, but rather also learning to stick with your decision. Once you do make your decision, you have to make yourself live with it and not give in to your doubts. Most of the time, you will later try to deviate from your original decision based on something that is either quite unlikely to happen in the first place or is something which you already know should have no impact on your decision.
Learn To Listen To Yourself
If you find yourself trying to put off the decision-making process or leaning towards making a decision which you do not consider true to your heart, try asking yourself if that consideration is truly based on what you feel or is it something that is externally influencing you. One of the most useless things that you can let influence your original decision is what the others will say about this. If you decide to do something and fail, will you become a laughing stock for everyone else? To find the answer to that, try putting yourself in the shoes of the others and think that if they failed after deciding to do something similar, would you laugh at them or commend them for trying their best in their life?
The truth is that no one else is more interested in your decision than you yourself are. Most of the thoughts that you do have about others mocking you will never come true as no one will be that much invested in it from the get-go. Even if they do, why should you care for them? If you decided to make a decision and worked for it, then you have already done everything you could possibly do. You can always try again. Whereas, the others can keep spending their time to mock you or actually do something in their life. Leave that decision to them and stay true to your decision.
As a rule of thumb, your decision should only be influenced by external facts and nothing else.
Learn To Move On
Even if you make a decision and it does not pan out the way you had hoped it would, you still have to move on. The question you should be asking yourself first is what could have been improved to turn it around so you are better prepared for it in the future. You should not consider your decision to be wrong just because the best possible outcome was not reached. Remember that you made a decision based on the pros and cons available to you and based on what you felt was right. No matter in which type of outcome you find yourself in at the end, there should not be even a shred of regret in your heart.
If you achieved what you set out to do, it is wonderful and you should now focus on what you should do next. If it doesn’t work out the way it was supposed to, ask yourself what you can improve to change that in the future and focus on the next important thing in your life.
Nothing should ever stop you in your tracks so you should always try to keep going forward with a clear conscience rather than forcing yourself to move with a heart full of regret over not making the decision and then giving up on it.
Conclusion
To summarize, in order to make a decision more effectively, all you need to do is consider only the actual plainly visible facts rather than overanalysing the external behaviours and future uncertainties that may or may not effect your goal at all. Once you do have your mind made up, try to stick with it and see it through the end. No matter how hard it gets, remember that all good things require hard work.
Lastly, regardless of the actual outcome, be it everything you expected and more or not what you expected at all, focus on moving forward to the next goal. If you dwell on the past too long, then the original purpose of making an efficient decision would be lost as well. So, try to make a decision and only walk forward. If you follow these guidelines then you should always know that you made the right decision at the right time. Future is always uncertain so you cannot criticize your decisions of the past based on your knowledge of the future.
