How to Make Good Choices - Life Coaching With a Smile

Someone recently asked me what I would change about my life if I could. Of course, I understand how important it is to make good decisions. However, the question made me think about the choices I have made over the years.

I believe there were maybe 5 or 6 major life changing choices that made huge directional turns in my life. From college to marriage, to kids to careers I made choices, that for better or worse, have shaped my life.

As I write this, I realize how my life path is dependent on where I take my next step. But the choices and steps I have taken have also influenced my life path. I also see that with many life choices, we learn more about those choices after we have made them, and we change ourselves in the process.

Life is all about choices, and making choices is an important part of our self-development. Ignoring needed choices until you circumstances force a decision (choosing by default) takes you out of the driver’s seat and takes away the ability to shape your own life. Not choosing is still a choice.

Making Good Choices is a Skill

Many people are not good at choosing or making decisions. As a life coach I have had many clients that find it impossible to make decisions. Such an inability to make choices can result from a variety of causes. For example, they may fear making changes or choosing wrongly. On the other hand, they may remember making a bad choice in their past that they regret and cannot get past. Finally, others do nothing, hoping the choice will work itself out, or go away. As a result, they delay, hoping somebody else might decide and take care of what needs doing. They may not know how to choose.

Some people have a condition, a fear of making decisions called decidophobia. If you happen to be a person who has this fear, trying to make simple daily decisions can be nearly impossible.

Use the Decision-Making Process to Make Good Choices

If making choices is hard for you or new to you here are some steps you can take that will help. To make good decisions, you generally need to do the following, whether you are aware of it or not:

Define the decision. What do we need to decide and what is involved.
Determine your goal. What do you want to achieve?
Details. Get the information needed to make a well thought-out decision.
Discover. This involves figuring out your alternative paths. What options do you have to choose from.
Delve into the options. This involves identifying the pros and cons of alternatives as they relate to your goals.
Decide. List the different options and based on the information you gathered and your analysis, choose the one that’s best.

It’s likely you will need to go back and forth as you progress down the process. Further, you might get some information that makes you modify your goal. You may even realize there are too many choices. Maybe you discover you need more information, so you do more research.

Different Types of Choices

Choice is the hardest, easiest thing there is. There are several kinds of choices that we make every day.

Habit Choices

These are the ones you make unheeded, perhaps hundreds of times a day. These habits develop over time from choices that become routine behavior. They occur when a routine is repeated regularly. You choose to make your bed because it is your routine behavior, like brushing your teeth, and feeding your dog.

Immediate Choices

Choices that come up with no previous warning. Such as, accepting an invitation to lunch, answering a call, choosing a tv show, picking out a book, having a second dessert. Many of these choices also result from habit. This is what makes habit change so hard.

This-or-That Choices

Making a choice between two options. Things like ocean or mountain vacation, french-fries or onion rings, lease or buy a car. These choices can be influenced by many things like habit, by persuasive arguments, research or inner drives.

Conscious Life Choices

We make these choices in life situations that we find less than satisfying; we need to make a change. One of the great things about having the power to choose is that if you don’t like where you are in your life right now, you can change it! You are in charge, and you can actively and intentionally pursue different options for yourself. It’s part of your free choice decision-making. You have the right to pursue happiness in your life.

You are Free to Choose

Making decisions, choosing a direction for big life changes like switching jobs or moving, can be stressful. On the other hand, if you can’t make a choice and you procrastinate or agonize over decisions, it can lead to health problems unhappiness, confusion and and anxiety according to experts.

Mastering choice can help with stress and your health. If you master making good choices, you will be in control and in charge of your life. It also boosts your self-esteem and your ability to self-care. Additionally, by making choices you will change how you see the world. Making choices displays leadership as well as complex thinking. Overall, these traits can improve your careers, and social skills.

“A good rule of thumb in decision-making is whenever you cannot decide what you should do, choose the action that represents a change, rather than continuing the status quo,” says University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt, who conducted an important recent study.

The choice is yours to make. Stand back and watch the world go by or become a part of it.

“Decision is a sharp knife that cuts clean and straight; indecision, a dull one that hacks and tears and leaves ragged edges behind it.” – Gordon Graham