How to Make the Best Decisions

How do you tend to make decisions? From your head? Or from your gut?

If right now you’re thinking I usually avoid making decisions altogether, or my strategy tends to be to wait and see what others do first, then you’re fooling yourself, because deferring a decision is a decision in itself!

When you make decisions from your head you weigh up the pros and cons, you evaluate all sides, the different aspects, as well as the impact and consequences of your options and possible choices.

When you approach decision making in this way you’d probably say you’re being realistic and that it’s a practical approach. But this approach usually takes time and often results in you staying small and playing safe because the risks appear too great.

Now contrast this style with making decisions from your gut. This is when you get a sense of the right choice for you without it being rational. Without you being able to logically explain or justify why you feel this way or why you have decided on this course of action. For this very reason many of you dismiss your intuition because you feel as an adult you should always be able to explain the reasoning behind your choices and decisions.

But this is just erroneous thinking, because we’re all emotional beings and our choices are almost always dictated by our emotions, often at an unconscious level. It’s only afterwards we use reason to justify our decisions. But these emotions themselves are often based on learned responses such as fear, guilt, or the need to feel in control, and these emotions and our conscious thought process are often stronger and override our initial 'gut sense'.

Now you might say it’s good we take our time to examine things more closely, but I’d say that your initial sense about what to do is usually a better indicator of what is right for you, because it’s like a whisper from your soul that comes through your intuition, your sixth sense. And your soul is your inner wisdom there to remind you of what’s best for you based on who you really are and what’s most important to you.

So trusting your intuition , your gut instinct, is the way to make the best decisions for you, even if they are challenging and you don’t know how you will achieve them, because once you make a definite decision the way will always appear.

Consider the times when you have trusted your instinct. And the times when you’ve talked yourself out of a particular decision by being reasonable, logical or practical. How did they work out for you? I’d like to bet the times when you’ve trusted your gut instinct have actually worked out better than some of those others. Am I right?

You make the best decisions quickly, so get into the habit of noticing how you feel as soon as you’re presented with a choice. Pay attention to what comes up for you. Start small, but start today.