Whether we like it or not, we are faced with decision-making almost all day every day. Some of those choices are really small and insignificant and we make them almost unconsciously. Others are much greater, with bigger consequences and usually take up a lot of our time. Most people dread making important choices because they have the potential of changing their lives entirely. There is a lot at stake, and most of us would much rather leave it to someone else to decide, or not make any decision at all. Yet, if we want to make any type of progress in our lives, we will have to get better at making important choices, since the older we get, the more serious choices we have to make. In order to learn how to make the decision-making process much more effective, we should adopt a different mindset that will be explained in the sections that follow.
“Act now, optimize later” approach
As suggested earlier, most of us get extremely uncomfortable and insecure when it comes to making important decisions, and more often than not, we miss out on an opportunity out of fear of making a wrong choice. We can get away with this when it comes to some choices that can be put on hold, but what should we do once we find ourselves faced with a situation where we have to act quickly? In order to improve choices we make in life and the process of making them itself, we must accept an altogether different approach. This means debating for some time and picking the choice we think is best, and improve later if we are not happy with the results. This can be forced at first, especially if you have spent most of your adult life postponing decision-making, but as the time goes by, you will be much better and the approach would come more natural to you. You will get enough security in the knowing that you can always repair the potential damage later.
What I like the most about this mindset is that once you start practicing it, you realize one really impressive truth about life, and that is – you cannot ever make a mistake actually. If you had made a choice, and it turned out to be a “mistake”, if not right away, sometime in the future you will be able to see what you were supposed to learn in that particular case, and how the lesson you learned has helped to you achieve your original plan in a much better way.
Start making choices in a different way
In order to successfully implement the approach, we need to gradually create a different mindset. First, we need to realize that we won’t live forever, and the sooner we get better at making choices, the more time we get to enjoy the rewards. Once we become aware of the transience of life, our next step is to focus on ourselves in order to discover if the choice we are about to make makes us happy
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