Ask anyone who has been on his or her own for a few years—“Have you ever regretted any decisions you’ve ever made in your life?” Most likely, you’ll get a big chuckle and a resounding, ”Yes!”.
Everyone has made “dumb decisions” in their life. Some don’t result in much consequence. Others have a major and lasting impact on their lives—they can cause pain for years, or even decades to come.
We want you to avoid making these “dumb decisions” and make all the right choices for your life so you can accomplish and become all you want.
The process we’re about to describe sounds pretty easy on the surface. It’s incorporating it into your everyday life and never wavering from it that’s the difficult part—but it can be done!
1. The first step toward making all the “right” decisions is to set goals for yourself—short-, mid-, and long-term goals for your career finances, relationships, even physical and spiritual health.
You will write down all your goals. Put them on 3” x 5” cards or some other handy-sized paper because you will be referring to them often.
You may want to make two copies: one to keep with you at all times (in your wallet or purse) and another set to hang up where you can readily see them (like on a bulletin board or beside your bathroom mirror so you are forced to review them every day).
2. Once you have your goals for yourself written down, you will need to refer to them every time you are faced with a decision—choosing a career, finding a job, deciding where to live, which big purchases you can make (car, furniture, wardrobe), whether to change jobs or marry, whether or not to relocate to a new part of the country, and so on and so on and so on . . .
When faced with one of these decisions, don’t panic and don’t feel that you need to make an immediate decision. Spur-of-the-moment decisions are usually the worst, and you can end up paying for them for a long, long time.
3. Sit down with a pad of paper and your list of goals (short-, mid-, and long-term ones). On a sheet of paper, write the costs of each alternative to the decision. Costs include more than money—opportunity costs come into play with every decision. An opportunity cost is a lost opportunity because you have chosen to do something else. For instance, if you only have $5 and you decide to spend it on fast food, an opportunity cost could be that you will not be able buy the loaf of bread, peanut butter or jelly that you need to make next weeks lunches for the kids. Or if you take one job, you can’t take another.
4. Try to determine what the consequences of each alternative might be. In some rare circumstances you may find that a choice which does not fit in with your goals must be made because the consequences of making a different choice are too great to bear. This is not likely to happen to you often—maybe never—so don’t let it worry you when weighing your important decisions.
5. Next, write down the pros and cons of the decision. For instance, what are the positive results that you are likely to experience if you decide to take a particular job or move to another state. What is the downside to each alternative.
6. Weigh each of these pros and cons. If the positive aspects of the decision are in areas that are much more important to you (such as enjoying the work you do) than the downside elements (such as odd work hours), then the table is tilting toward making a positive decision. But you’re not finished yet!
7. Now you must look at your goals and determine if this opportunity or decision will get you closer to any of them. If taking a job offer in computer sales will get you closer to your goal of someday managing a software development team, then great. If it doesn’t, you will be holding yourself back from accomplishing that career goal if you take the sales job.
The same holds true for every decision you have to make—whether it has to do with your career, finances, or personal life. Look at where your choice fits in with your goals. If your decision won’t get you closer to any of your goals, it will be a waste of your time, energy, perhaps money to pursue it. The decision will probably prevent you from accomplishing what you have set your heart on.
If you use this method to make every decision you face, you will be far ahead of your peers in accomplishing what you want.
As much as each of us would like to think that if we approach decisions making properly, we would make all the “right” decisions all of the time; this is not true. You probably won’t sail through life with “no regrets at all”. Often there are costs, consequences, or other alternatives that we are not aware of when we make our decisions. That is the reason why some time and effort should be put in to determine the costs, consequences, and other alternatives. Just going by a “gut feeling” will get you in trouble more times than not.
(This information came from the “Dose of Reality” series.)
