The Best Decision Making Advice I have Received.

Where you are now is a result of the series of decisions you have made to date. Yes, think about your finances, your career, your relationships, it’s all you and the decisions you have made. It’s easy to fall into the trap of “ I had no choice,” but did you not have a choice? My best guess is that every time we say there is no choice, it usually means that there is no comfortable choice. When the alternative is hard, we tend to label it NO CHOICE simply because we can’t fathom walking that path. The truth is, we might have no choice on the cards that life hands to us, but we do, however, have a choice on how we play those cards. I think of people like Morrie who, without expecting it, were diagnosed with a terminal disease, ALS, which kills you slowly day by day. In the book Tuesdays with Morrie, it states that Morrie made a decision coming out of the doctor’s office. He asked himself, “Do I wither up and disappear, or do I make the best of my time left? And guess what he chose to live, making the best of the time he had left, and the guy had ALS, he was literally falling apart!!

Decision making is one of the most important aspects in our lives, and yet we tend to give it the least attention. We tend to use the phrase go with the flow in an attempt to avoid making decisions and later on say we had no choice. A decision might not change your life overnight, but it sure does change the trajectory of your life. Personal growth is a decision. I consider intentionality as the number one rule for growth, and it requires you to make a decision to be intentional. Even your mood can be a decision. When offended, you might choose to go with the flow and be sour for the rest of the day, or you can stop, decide not to let the offense take away your joy. Guess what your feelings tend to follow. I am not implying that you ignore your feelings, acknowledge them as they have given you a warning that you have been offended, take in the warning, and decide what you want to do with it.

If decision-making is so important in our day-to-day life, we have to take time to study this subject.

What is decision-making?

According to the dictionary, A decision is a conclusion or resolution reached after consideration. Decision-making then becomes the process of consideration.

The stakes of the process of consideration depend on the decision at hand. Some decisions are easy to make, like waking up in the morning and bathing because you know you have got to bathe, I mean, for many that is. Then, some decisions make the consideration stage not so straightforward. There are different methods set aside to help with the consideration stage, including writing a list of pros and cons and then weighing them. Another one of my favorites is using the decision tree method, which is used in large, successful organizations, and you and I probably use it in our day-to-day lives. The only issue is that we don’t realize that we are using the decision tree method in making decisions.

The Decision Tree Method of Consideration.

The decision tree is a visual representation used to analyze and predict the outcome of a series of decisions by asking some questions.

All the above are good tools to help come to the right decisions in a situation. Practical and something that you can follow as a step-by-step guide. However, from the best decision-making advice I have received, these tools are only secondary, and your state will affect the results of the secondary tools you are using for your decision-making process.

The best advice I have received Dr Anita Phillips.

Sometime around October of 2023, while watering my mother’s garden at the end of the day. I listened to Dr Anita Philips, and she so happened to share what I now consider the best advice I have received for decision making. Dr Anita says that “ You should know the seed from which you are making decisions, is it from a position of desperation/fear/courage? Your state will affect the questions you ask or the responses you give in the decision tree process. Every decision will eventually yield fruit, but do not make a decision from a position of wanting to control the outcome. She goes on to mention that control is about limiting, predicting, holding, and preventing, and you and I don’t have that capacity. Guess who does? God. Rather, make decisions from, ‘I am doing what’s right-  the right thing then stems from your set of beliefs and your emotional state’.

Let me expand this with a scenario. Say you are in a relationship, and there are some traits in that relationship that are not right for you or suffocating. The right thing to do in this case would be to talk to your partner, address the situation, and move forward. The outcome here is not clear; you might be at a bridge to grow in your relationship, but this might mean ending the relationship. If you are operating from a place of fear of rejection, you will be scared to address the situation because you want to control the outcome, which is not losing the individual. If you are operating from a position of Love, however, you are likely to address it from that position of love because you want to grow with that individual. Unfortunately, you don’t have control over how they will take it, will they also operate from a position of love and decide to grow, or fear, or a trauma response that they are being attacked and leave? Regardless of the outcome, you should be able to trust that even if it may seem like I ‘lost’,  I have made the right decision because I was coming from a good posture. The fruit that I may not understand in the moment will show.

If you decide to start a business from the right posture, the outcome might not be profits right away, but you have to continue on the path because you know it was not built out of resentment or trying to prove that you do not need anyone. Trust the process, and your fruit will be wholesome and juicy. Before you get into the secondary tools of decision-making, evaluate where your heart is and make sure you are in the right state before you ask questions to help you make decisions.

Your decisions are at the heart of your personal development journey and ultimately your life. make sure you are making the right ones.

In Summary,
Your stance/position/character will be the root of the decisions you make. If you are in a state of fear, your decisions will stem from fear; the opposite is true: a state of love means your decisions stem from love. Let’s not fall into the trap of making decisions to control the outcome; instead, rest, trust, and know God is guiding your growth journey.

tanyafungai