4 Rules To Make Better Decisions

Decisions are everything.

Each one you make can fundamentally alter the course of your life.

That’s exactly why some billionaire CEOs even wear the same clothes every day — to keep the number of daily decisions to a minimum.

But that doesn’t mean YOU should wear the same clothes every day. CEOs make a ridiculous amount of decisions of high importance on a daily basis. It’s a different game. The process can be simpler for most of us.

The first thing I want you to do is very simple:

Ask yourself the question:

“What is my current decision-making process?”

Why is that the first step?

Because most people have never even thought of what their decision process is like. That means that most people out there have never put in a second of their time to analyze how they make decisions.

Are you one of those people? If so, don’t feel bad, it’s fine. It just feels like a completely natural process, right?

Usually, when faced with a simple decision, it’s like the decision is made in a matter of 1 or 2 seconds. You don’t even think about it.

For example, if you go get ice cream and you’re the type of person who loves 10 different ice cream flavors… Once you get there, you look at the flavors and you’re instantly more inclined to pick 1 or 2 of them. Maybe it’s between chocolate and vanilla. So, in this case, what you did was narrow down the number of choices to make it easier for yourself to decide.

That’s actually a great move, by the way. It’s much easier to make a decision between 2 options than it is between 10. (Consider this an unspoken rule of the art of making good decisions)

But do you see now how you can analyze your own method of making decisions?

After narrowing it down to 2, let’s face it… everyone would just go with their gut.

(More paranoid and insecure people could look back at their negative past experiences to make themselves more confident about their decision)

Before we get to the gist of it, I’d just like you to think to yourself “Is going with my gut a good decision or not?”. We’ll get back to this later.

How To Make Good Decisions

So, how DO you make good decisions?

One of the key things to understand is that?it will not be obvious if it was a good or bad decision?for a LONG TIME.

Think about it. Going back to the ice cream debacle, let’s say you picked chocolate… You had your chocolate ice cream and you LOVED IT. It was right after lunch and if anybody had asked you that day “Do you think you chose the right flavor?”, you’d reply with an extremely confident “Yes!”.

However, the next day when you wake up, you feel like shit. Turns out, the chocolate ice cream had expired and everyone who had it that day now has food poisoning???

I’m aware this scenario is kind of ridiculous, but I’m just trying to simplify a fact: even decisions that at first may seem great can come back to bite you in the ass.

I just wanted to make sure you grasped this notion because it’s very important to be aware of it when making a decision.

And all of this leads us to the first rule of making good decisions:

Rule #1: Always consider every single possible consequential scenario

By this I mean, before you make a decision, always consider the pros and cons.

No shit, right?

But I mean literally as many as you can possibly come up with.

Using the ice cream situation again, after you’d have narrowed down the choices to just two, here are some examples of thoughts you could have:

“If I get chocolate, I’ll be satisfied for sure. I love chocolate in everything. I’ll eat it faster and enjoy it more.”

“But I’ve heard chocolate ice cream from this place isn’t the best… What if they are using some cheap lame chocolate? That will be even worse. Because I’ll have higher expectations for chocolate, meaning I’ll be more disappointed.”

“And what if the cheap chocolate makes me sick? I can’t be sick tomorrow… It’s such an important day. I can’t miss my presentation at work…”

“On the other hand, there’s vanilla. I’ve never heard anybody talk poorly about this place’s vanilla-flavored ice cream…”

“Plus, even though it’s not my absolute favorite — like chocolate — the truth is you can never go wrong with vanilla. It has never let me down before.”

“Ok, I’m not feeling like a risk-taker today. I’m going with vanilla.”

And boom. You saved your stomach from some awful moments.

Again, I know this example is ridiculous, but if I can come up with this much about ice cream, imagine everything you can come up with when you have a real decision ahead of yourself!

But now let’s move on to…

Rule #2: Take emotion out of the equation

This is one of the biggest challenges there is.

At this point of the decision-making process, you want to look at your decision from a bird’s eye view.

You need to be able to look at it from above in order to truly understand the problem and the best solution for it.

Here I would advise you to do some meditation, but I’m aware not everyone meditates (even though you should!).

So, instead, imagine the exact same scenario, but with different people in it. Close your eyes and just picture different people with the same situation and see how you look at it (it might help to imagine the person in your situation to have a different gender or race or nationality or a big age difference. The goal is to distance yourself as much as possible from the person you’re imagining in your place).

Rule #3: Listen To Your Gut

So, what did you think about this when I asked you earlier?

It may come as a surprise, but your gut is usually right.

Your gut feeling is your subconscious trying to talk to you… and your subconscious knows you MUCH better than yourself.

HOWEVER, you must think to yourself “Is this my gut feeling because it’s what my body wants, or because this is aligned with what I, consciously, want?”

It’s very important to know the difference. For example, if a man who is not used to getting female attention meets a mischievous woman who is very attractive, his gut feeling will most likely tell him to give her whatever she wants in the hopes of getting some “action”. But realistically, she’s just trying to get something out of him. Maybe she’s a hustler or a scammer.

Your gut MAY pick up on that, or it may not.

So, for this rule, you’ll need to practice. Only through practice will you be able to learn to differentiate between the different kinds of gut feelings you get.

But the truth is, your gut is right at least 80% of the time.

Rule #4: Sleep On It

I know this one might not always be applicable but, if you can, always sleep on the subject.

Try to think more about the decision at night, a few hours before going to sleep. (Don’t think about it while trying to fall asleep though — You need to rest.)

During your sleep, your subconscious actually explores (or rather imagines) different scenarios and solutions.

I made this one last because it’s not always possible to sleep on it. But if you can, absolutely do it. Even if you can’t, try to think of a solution to delay the decision so you CAN sleep on it. Sleeping on a problem is one of the best things you can do to find a solution for it.

This does not, however, mean you should sleep on it for months on end. That would be fear preventing you from going through with a decision.

If it was the most important decision in the world, I don’t think it should take more than 30 days (unless you would have the need to collect more information about it). So, use that as a reference.

Try out these rules. Give them a chance and you’ll see huge differences in your decision-making abilities.

Also, when you think you only have 1, 2 or 3 solutions, change your mindset. Try to be creative to figure out new solutions (This would be before you narrow down the options). Don’t limit yourself. The better the decision, the more confident you’ll be in it.

If you’d like to have a life consultant to help you with making tough decisions and to help you improve into the best version of yourself, you can always visit my website and book a free call with me:?https://kaidezen.com/

Hope this is able to help you out,

- Dez