Tough Decisions

A philosophical friend and I had a great Zoom conversation yesterday on how to help people who are having trouble making decisions. He's hoping to lead a workshop on decision making for some folks who often find themselves stuck.

I counseled that wisdom is about putting things in a proper context. We often freeze up in decision situations because we wrongly imagine that too much is at stake. If we make the right decision, it will be great, but if we make the wrong choice, it will be catastrophic. Most decisions aren't like that.

Let me use a football analogy. Most decisions either move the ball down the field, or show us what's not going to work to accomplish that, which helps us in the next choice. The only decisions to avoid even getting close to are those likely to take you out of the game altogether, or end it for everyone involved. Most decisions aren't like that but are just steps along a path, reversible steps—efforts, tries, best guess assays.

But we're helped by a simple process:

1. Collect as much relevant information as possible.

2. Clarify your options. Use your best values in this.

3. Contemplate the implications of the options.

4. Cleanse your mind. Make it blank. Just be.

Then you can be open to deeper insight and choose well.

Just make sure every decision satisfies the question: In doing this, are we becoming who we want to be? In choosing this, am I acting as consistently as possible with becoming the best version of myself?