Recently, we have been assisting a young person who has been struggling with his indecision. One thing for sure, North Americans are fortunate to be living in an environment where there are many choices and options in our life styles, occupations and careers.
However when one is faced with too many choices, it can be confusing and overwhelming. This young person has been tormented by a few options in his life and he is having a hard time falling asleep just going over in his head what career path he should follow and what would his next step be. We could feel his agony over his decision and choices. One week, he posted on Facebook that he would change his career and do this; then next week, he changed his mind and wanted to do something else; another week, he changed his mind again and this went on for quite some time. The uncertainty and pain was evident.
When I was younger, I also faced a few choices and had to make some significant life changing decisions. In fact we all have to make numerous decisions each day. Here are what the expert recommend people to do regarding decision making in our daily lives:
1. Set a Limit on Trivial Decisions
Starting first thing in the morning, we have to make decisions, i.e. what to eat for breakfast, what to pack for lunch to what to wear to work. Experts suggests that we set a time limit, such as a 5 minute time limit at the most to allow ourselves to make these trivial decisions as to save time and headaches.
I, for one, have wasted a lot of time in the morning deciding what I should wear and often make a few changes before I could decide. This is a good suggestion for me personally!
2. Give Yourself Three Options from which to Choose
When facing with a multitude of choices such as choosing which colour , hardware, furniture to purchase for a house redecoration, where to go on vacations, where to rent a place to live or what gifts to buy for your spouse and loved ones etc., experts recommend that you narrow yourselves down to three options only.
In this way, instead of mulling over a thousand possibilities, you can focus your thoughts on the best three possibilities in a more in depth manner.
3. Set a Firm Deadline on Your Decision
With more important and costly decisions such as which course to take at college, if you should invest in renovating your house or buying a new place, many people could not make that decision therefore they keep postponing it fro years and never get anything done.
The same thing happened to us - for years we were not sure if we should build a nice deck from our kitchen or build an extension to our house. Because we could not decide what to do, therefore, we have been living in the same house in Toronto for twenty fives years without doing anything. Finally, I told myself that we must make a decision to do something about the kitchen renovation. Since our nephew's wedding was coming up in the fall, we decided we must have our house renovation done before his wedding so that we could host a dinner at our place.
I was glad we gave ourselves this deadline because we renovated our kitchen and the main floor of our house completely and we just love it!!!
Setting a deadline for yourself for doing certain thing you want to do and sticking to it can help you to make that difficult decision and get things accomplished.
When comes to the very important decisions in your lives such as who to get married with, buying a house, relocating your family or changing from a career to another or considering a job offer, experts suggest before you make that important decision, you should do the following:
- Get enough sleep/ rest
- In good physical and mental condition
- You are not hungry and have eaten - ( There were cases reported that judges made wrong decisions when they were hungry! )
I hope that these suggestions will help you in making your decisions a little easier.
R.T.
Toronto
Source - Dr. Oz show, Feb. 2014
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