Live Life With No Regrets!Overcoming Indecisiveness - 8 Stages of Effective Decision-Making
"Every time you make a real decision, you own more of yourself."
This book was written by a medical psychologist who writes about decision making from the psychological point of view.
The book is well written and easy to follow in point form. His illustration and examples flesh out the simple points that he is trying to expouse.
He divides his book into 7 Sections.
First, he describes what real decisions are versus "psuedo-decisions", decisions that are not really decisions at all.
Things like procrastination, ambivalence (waiting for things to turn up), letting someone else decide, going against the tide (just to be different, a subtle for of dependency), one-foot-in and one-foot-out (trying to have all options without making a decision), looking back/foot-dragging and wondering what might have been (an infantile desire and belief that we can have everything we want.)
Secondly, he goes on to describe the various decision blockers, priorities, the stages of decision making, deadlocks, twenty secrets of decision success and finally overcoming indecisiveness.
I recommend this book for those wishing a introduction to making decisions and those wishing to understand the psychology of making a decision and improving your self-esteem.
| Stage | Description | Pitfalls | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | Listing and Observing All The Possibilities, Options Or Choices Involved In the Issue. | This stage involves getting as many options as possible and researching the options. Lateral thinking is an asset here. Let the unconscious freely come up with ideas. Be even illogical. |
Time traps or falling into perceived time traps. Impounding ourselves with other peoples options and neglecting our own set of options. Difficulties involve feeling boxed in. |
| 2. | Sustaining A Free Flow of Feelings And Thoughts About Each Of The Possible Choices. | Let yourself feel about each option. | |
| 3. | Observing Thoughts And Feelings About Each Of The Options And Applying those Feelings. | Taking a good, hard look at the feelings and thoughts we have about each choice offered, giving them a chance to really register. Apply logical rationale to each choice and to our feelings and thoughts about them. | Rushing to conclusions before feelings reach full fruition, resulting in impulse decisions. Therefore learn to be patient and to take one's own feelings seriously is crucial. Lack of self-esteem, hopelessness is evidenced when options are not paid attention to. Self-erasing themselves by ignoring themselves. Having thoughts and feelings are useless if we discard them or trivialize them. They will only come back with a vengeance later. |
| 4. | Relating Choices To Established Priorities | Rating your options against your priorities. List your personal priorities against the options, perhaps from 1 to 10. What are the most important factors in your decision? | |
| 5. | Designation! Coming To A Conclusion By Designating One Choice and Initiating Discarding Those Not Chosen. | This crossover from stage 4 to 5 is almost imperceptible. However, there is a sense of things falling together. A sense of "solidness". At this stage, we start to discard unused options so as to clear the way for the designated choice. |
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| 6. | Registering The Decision. | This stage is just letting the decision sink. To feel the decision take effect. | This is not a "see how it feels" stage in order to backtrack. People who cannot make decisions of obsessive ruminating usually have their major difficulty at this point. They will prolong this stage way beyond practical need or value. They will sit and sit until their apathy converts the process into a frozen stalemate so that choice never becomes real decision. Characteristically, obsessive ruminators will at this point return repeatedly to Stage 3--observing their thoughts and feelings, reopening this step again and again--and applying "more logic" ad nauseam. |
| 7. | Investing The Decision With Committed Feelings, Thoughts, Time And Energy And Completing The Elimination Of The Unused Options. | This is the stage of commitment in the decision making process. Choice is not decision, unless implementation takes place. Choice must be translated into action or inaction--whatever status quo is needed within a suitable period of time. This consists of finally and completely eliminating the nonchosen options. "Let them go!". This is where growing up is all about, "letting rejected choices go and thus establishing priorities and demonstrating a willingness to pay a price--the price of discarded options--and to take responsibility through our decisions for who we are and what we want. This allows us to withdraw energy from unused options and fully concentrate on our chosen option. This is crossing the Rubicon. |
People who make choices for all the wrong reasons--coercion, to be liked by others, because "it's the right thing to do," or for purely conventional reasons--will often demonstrate difficulty at this point. This is corrosive to morale and establishes a pessimistic mood antithetical to good decision-making |
| 8. | Translating The Decision Into Optimistic Action. | This is the loyalty and optimism stage. Not to say that appropriate change is not desirable but it must not hamper or dilute our continuing loyalty to decisions made. This needs self-esteem and maturity, and a decision made begets growth and maturity. |
People suffering from self-hate have a great deal of difficulty sustaining either loyalty or optimism in decision-making They tend to abandon decisions at any sign of difficulty and quickly become pessimistic about the wisdom and outcome of their choices. When the inevitable bump in the road presents itself, they fail here. |
Ultimately, making decisions means taking control of your life.
Remember the Big Fact: No decision is really better than the other, but the commitment to it makes the difference.
The book of James was right in saying (about asking for wisdom): "But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does." (James 1:6-7)
Your decisions affects YOU! Making a decision means taking control of your life and gaining more self-esteem. The feedback result is that you feel good that you have taken control of your life.
"Any choice you make will be a constructive one, as long as it springs from real desires, values and priorities, and has your full commitment."
Decision making is a lot like commanding a ship. You can go left or right. But you cannot have both. Some people have problems, because they want both.
