How to make better decisions, faster

“There are no right decisions. There are only decisions that you choose to make right.” - Terez Rijkenberg
What if I told you that all of the decisions that you have made up until this point in your life have been the right decisions?
And if you believed me, what might be different for you? Specifically, in the way you show up to decisions from now on?
Let’s play with that thought for a second - the one where “all of the decisions you have made up until now have been the right ones”.
If you believed that wholeheartedly then:

• You would have less regret about the past, less time spent ruminating and worrying about it, and instead believe that each decision you made, has led you to where you are now with lessons, ideas and insights on how to get to the success that you have right now.
• You would have less time spent searching for the “right” decisions and more time spent taking action on decisions to make them “right”.
• You wouldn’t allow yourself to feel “stuck” and think you don’t know how to move forward
• You would have more confidence and trust in yourself to make decisions, knowing that you could figure anything out.

And... If you had all of the above, then you would probably make better decisions, 10 times faster!
So if you just believed right now that “all of the decisions you have made up until now have been the right ones for you”, I’d like you to think about how that thought makes you feel.
For me, it gives me a feeling of freedom.
Because if I believe that, then all of the decisions I make going forward are already the “right” ones too.
And then I don’t need to spend hours looking for the “right” decision going forward, I just need to make a decision and then take action to make it “right”.
So many of us spend days, weeks, months, and sometimes years sitting on the fence about some decision.
And every time we feel uneasy or anxious or frustrated, it’s likely that it’s just an undecided decision.
The options available to us at any time are:
1. Make a decision about the thing that makes me feel bad, and face the possible discomfort that comes with making a decision, OR
2. Continue to sit on the fence about a decision, and face the discomfort of sitting on a fence (it feels similar to sitting on a real fence. I.e. ruminating; feeling stuck; procrastinating; feeling bad about feeling stuck and procrastinating...)
And so the question arises: why do we sometimes allow ourselves the discomfort of sitting on the fence instead of the discomfort of making a decision?
And here is the key to why we aren’t making better decisions, faster yet:
We don’t make decisions faster and better because we don’t want to face discomfort that we don’t know.
Making a decision will require us to face discomfort that we think is unknown and that we think we cannot control.
This is the cognitive dissonance that our brain offers us to try and keep us from expending too much energy.
But really what’s happening is that we are just delaying that pain we will eventually experience anyway.
A decision is always made. And even indecision is a decision.
In this episode, I’ll be sharing the strategies we can use to transform the way we make decisions by reducing the fear we have about unknown outcomes.

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