We make decisions every day from what we will eat for breakfast to larger decisions around our careers and futures. The decisions we make shape our lives, thus decision-making is an essential life skill. However, there’s no course on decision-making, which sometimes feels like we make mistakes that could have been avoided. This post isn’t a course, however, the techniques here may be helpful in making better decisions.

1. The Four-Step Natural Brilliance Model (Scheele, 2001) highlights a four-step approach to making decisions: Release, Notice, Respond, and Witness.

a. Release: Allow stress to release from your body and mind as a relaxed body and mind creates the optimal state for analyzing a situation. When stressed and tense, we tend to narrow our focus, which reduces the number of options we can think of when problem-solving or making a decision.

b. Notice: Become aware of what is going on internally and around you. This allows you to be both relaxed and alert so that you can increase the amount of information you have in a particular situation and can come up with more options to help you make your decision.

c. Respond: Take action to gain more feedback to work with. By acting you obtain more information around what works and/or doesn’t work moving forward in a decision.

d. Witness: Imagine sitting across from yourself and take on the perspective of a counselor or trusted friend. Have a conversation with yourself about the results you achieved when acting. Decide how to best work with the feedback you have received from this action so you can modify future responses and act again.

2. The WRAP Method (Heath and Health, 2007) focuses on the idea that most decision-making techniques are flawed as they ignored the “four villains” of decision-making which include: narrowly framing choices, confirmation bias where we hone in on information that only supports our decision, short-term emotions that can lead us to the wrong decisions, and overconfidence around hoe the future will unfold. Heath and Heath (2007) recommend a four-step process to decision-making that combat against these villains:

a. Widen your choices: Push for new and better options, expand the choices you have.

b. Reality-test your assumptions: Get outside of your head to gather information you can trust, examine both sides of the argument as opposed to one.

c. Attain distance before deciding: Take some time away from your short-term emotions by imagining you were a friend providing advice to another.

d. Prepare to be wrong: Consider what will happen if things don’t turn out as planned, how can you be prepared for this? What additional steps can you take in order to plan for multiple outcomes?

3. The Six Thinking Hats (de Bono, 1986) is a creative, decision-making process that involves looking at a problem from six different perspectives or six different “hats”. Those Six Hats include:

a. White Hat: Gather all the information you can about the topic at hand, examine this information and determine what you can learn from it. Fill gaps in your knowledge with new information acquired.

b. Red Hat: Look at the decision with intuition, gut reactions, and emotions. Focus on what your feelings and emotions are guiding you toward and consider what the emotional reaction of others might be depending on the choice you make.

c. Black Hat: Look at things pessimistically, thinking of all the possible ways something could go wrong. Try and determine why certain ideas and approaches might not work as this will highlight weaknesses in the various decisions you have thought of. This allows you to eliminate those faulty solutions, alter your approach and consider contingency plans should a problem arise.

d. Yellow Hat: Think positively; the optimistic viewpoint will allow you to see the benefits of the decision you make, the value in this decision, and the opportunities that can come from it.

e. Green Hat: This hat allows you to look at things creatively in order to craft solutions to the problem you are facing when you have to choose a course of action. f. Blue Hat: Focus on taking time and providing enough attention to each of the thinking styles represented by the other hats. This hat allows you to sum up everything you have learned from the other hats in order to reach the best decision.

If you are still struggling to make a decision, click here to work with a therapist or life coach who can help!

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