Understanding your Decision-Making Process
Every day we thousands of decisions and choices, starting from the most trivial things to the most important. For example, what we are going to have for dinner, what we wear or should I stay in bed or just wake up, you get it.
Based on research, experts claim that we take about 200 decisions regarding food each day, that's just food alone. Before we will be able to make an almost every time good decision we should evaluate how we currently make decisions and understand the factors involved in this process. Also, very important we start accepting responsibility for our decision whether they turn out good or bad. Own your decision.
How Decisions are made and why.
As humans, we like to think of ourselves that every decision we make is purely logical and we weigh the options and choose the most rational and sens-making options. Is not like that at all. Our decision-making process relays heavily on gut instinct and emotions we feel at that certain moment. This mechanism we decide with is present when you make a trivial decision on your food and also when you take bigger decisions like quitting your job.
Although, emotions are good in some circumstances when we make decisions, more than often they over-complicated our decision-making process.
Now let's explore the role of emotions, values and Cost VS Benefits in our decision-making process.
The Role of Emotions in Decision-Making.
As I said in the previous chapter we use emotion for almost every decision-making step, as humans, we act with emotions, thinking will involve emotions, thought deliberation with emotions, and everything we do is done from an emotional perspective. You might think that is not so beneficial and counterproductive, however, it helps us have rewarding lives.
Using emotion in decision-making has downsides too, is important to know how to manage our emotional side while we make decisions. Allowing emotions to take control, can make us impulsive and urge us to be irrational and will result in poor outcomes.
Another downside of the emotional decision can be the 'paralyze', emotions oftentimes can provoke anxiety and uncertainty which will lead to indecisions and terrible decisions.
The emotions will also give birth to decision biases which we will discuss in our next post. Biases guide us to feel more inclined towards some options than others, the biases can provoke some havoc in our decision process. Never try to silence your emotions, rather try working with them.
The Role of Values in Decision-Making
What do you Stand For? Making good decisions is not only about gathering sufficient information and methodically weighing the options and then choosing the best. The process also involves our personal and professional values. This might include the things you stand for, you principles that drive you and what kind of person you aspire to be.
These values will drive us towards goals and purpose. Without the values, we will be inclined to choose the easiest and quickest way towards success and not care if we act with integrity.
If you are a person with strong values and integrity, is advisable to let your values guide you in your decision-making process, in this manner you will feel less troubled by risks, less stressed or anxious.
Your values will act as a checklist before we make an impulse decision.
Weighing the Cost vs. the Benefit of Our Decisions
Always when we make a decision we will lose and gain something, there will never be only gain or only loss. For example, you will have to choose between a salad and a pizza. If you choose salad you will gain a healthy meal but lose a tasty meal and vice versa. Each option caring benefits.
The trade-off is present in every decision we make from food to changing a job you hate.
To make good decisions we have to identify and be aware of the trade-off for each option. Once we are aware of these factors, only then we can start processing what we want.
Could you please add more for the Weighing the Cost vs. the Benefit of Our Decisions? I feel like weighting the cost of a decision, it's really hard to do it in our days.
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