Making choices – HARD or EASY?

Making the right choice is indeed aha!

The catch – one can only know if a choice is right or wrong in retrospect.

Every day we are faced with multiple choices and as society is progressing choices are increasing multi-fold. With this multi-fold increase, decision making is becoming complex whether you are a homemaker or a business owner, a student or a working professional, an artist or a sportsman – simply due to plethora of options available in everything.

Some choices are easy and some hard. Choices are hard –

when they cannot be reversed easily
when there is lesser predictability of outcome
when options are at par
when you lack the maturity to take ownership of a choice gone bad.

Some people like making choices. It gives them a true sense of freedom. Some on the other hand absolutely dread making choices. Choices paralyze them and they more often than not prefer someone else making a choice for them. If something goes wrong at least they can it blame it on someone else – HA!

The people who make choices with ease live life wholeheartedly and have a smile on their face. It’s not that they make easy choices but they make choices with ease. Interacting and observing these people closely led me to the following framework that can help choice making exercise become EASY.

Evaluation:

People who find making choices easy have their evaluation parameters based on what works for them. They know what is important for them. They know what they value and are OK with it. They make choices consistent with their evaluation. They don’t endlessly ponder on the outcomes by thinking “What will happen if I choose this and xyz happens”. They simply say “My evaluation leads me to this choice and make the choice”.

Acceptance of Outcome:

A distinctive quality of people who find decision making easy is that of acceptance. They accept the outcome of their choice. They are willing to take full responsibility of the outcome of the choice they made. They are OK with making mistakes. They do not have the compulsive need to be correct every time. They are OK to be proved wrong. They learn the lesson,update their evaluation framework and move on. They understand when choices are based on assumptions, outcomes can go against them.

Seldom regret:

Another quality of people who make choices/decisions with ease is that they seldom regret a choice. If things do not go as per their expectations, they do not beat themselves against the wall as to why they made a particular choice to begin with. They do not regret and simply move on. One bad decision does not stop them from taking another decision. They do not let one bad choice affect their self confidence.

Yo Yo mind kept away:

A yo-yo mind does not allow for easy decision making. A yo-yo mind wants to keep everyone happy. It is unable to settle on the order of priorities and that makes decision making, a difficult exercise for them. It wants to be right all the time and hence will keep on visualizing different outcomes of the choice. It is difficult to fix a base for decision making. People who make decisions with ease have learnt to keep the yo-yo mind away. They do so by keeping things simple and their decision making parameters at bare minimum.

Making a choice can be a daunting task.Give yourself a chance to learn – it can be worked upon. If you find making choices difficult – find out what is stopping you from making it EASY – work on that aspect and very soon you too will join the gang of people who are able to make choices easily – remember not make easy choices but make choices with ease!

Making choices can be made EASY!

E - Evaluation
A - Acceptance of outcomer
S - Seldom Regret
Y - Yo Yo mind kept away