Often times, we go through our everyday life unaware of our thoughts and actions. Even more we are unaware of about the profound effects of our decisions and how each and every decision made shapes our current reality. It shapes who we are as a person because we follow through with the decisions we make without even realizing it. Occasionally, people are not happy with the results in their life. Making the effort to change your decisions starting today will be the key to creating the person you want to be and the life you want to have in the future.
Here are seven self development techniques to help make decisions that will change your life.
1. Realize the power of decision making.
First, we need to understand what a decision does. Any decision that you make causes a chain of events to happen. Say for example, you decide to pick up a cigarette to smoke it, that decision might result in you picking up another one later on to get that same high feeling. After a day, you may have gone through a pack without knowing it. But if you decide not to smoke that first cigarette and make a decision every five minutes to focus your attention somewhere else when you get that craving, after doing this for a week, your cravings will eventually subside and you will become smoke-free. But it comes down to making that very first decision of deciding whether or not to pick up that cigarette.
2. Go with your gut.
When it comes to making a decision, often times, we take too much making the choice because we're afraid of what's going to happen. We go through things like careful planning, deep analysis, and pros and cons before deciding etc, which can be tedious and time consuming. Learn to trust your gut instinct. For the most part, your first instinct is usually the one that is correct or the one that you truly wanted to go with. Even if you end up making a mistake, going with your gut still makes you a more confident decision maker compared to someone who takes all day to decide.
3. Carry out your decision.
Commit to making a real decision and act on it. What is a real decision? It is when you decide on something, and that decision is carried out through action. It is pointless to make a decision and have it played out in your head, but not doing anything about it. To make real changes in your life, you have to make it a habit to apply action with your decision until it's completed. By going through this so many times, you will feel more confident with accomplishing the next decision that you have in mind.
4. Tell others about your decisions.
Telling others about a decision makes you want to follow through. There is just something about telling other people what we're going to do that makes us follow through. For example, for the longest time I've been trying to become an early riser but whenever I tried to use my own will power, to wake up and stay up, it seemed impossible. So I went to a forum and told people that I would wake up at 6 AM and stay up. Within two days, I was able to accomplish doing this because I felt a moral obligation to follow through with my words even though I failed the first time. Did people care? Probably not, but just the fact that there might be someone else out there seeing if you're telling the truth will give you enough motivation to following through with your decision.
5. Learn from your past decisions.
Mistakes happen but it is how you learn from them that is the key. Even after I failed to follow through my decision the first time, I didn't give up. I basically asked myself, "What can I do this time to make it work tomorrow? The truth is you are going to mess up occasionally but instead of beating yourself up over it, learn from it. Ask yourself, what was good and bad about the decision I made? What can I learn from it so I can make a better decision next time? Don't put so much emphasis focusing on short term effects rather, focus on the long term effects.
6. Maintain a flexible approach.
While this may sound counter-intuitive, but making a decision doesn't mean that you can't be open to other options. For example, let's say you made the decision to lose ten pounds by next month through cardio. If something comes up, you don't have to just do cardio. You can be open to losing weight through different methods of dieting as long as it helps you reach your goal in the end. Don't be stubborn to seek out only one way of making a decision. Embrace any new knowledge that brings you closer to accomplishing your initial decision.
7. Have fun making decisions.
Lastly, enjoy the decision making process. Decision-making might not be the most fun thing world to do, but when you do it often, it becomes a game of opportunity. You'll learn a lot about yourself on the way, you'll become confident when you're with yourself and around others, and making decisions will just become a lot easier after you do it so often that you won't even think about it.
Anything you decide to do from this point on can have a profound effect later on. Opportunities are always waiting for you. Examine the decisions that you currently have in the day. Are there any that can be changed to improve your life in some way? Are there any decisions that you can make today that can create a better tomorrow?
