Every single day in your life, you make personal decisions that take you in specific directions throughout your life. Things like, what am I going to wear or, what am I going to eat, or should I press the ‘snooze’ button on the alarm clock, seem very trivial and sometimes irrelevant when thinking about decision making. However, even those apparently ‘tiny’ decisions might have a HUGE impact in what your destiny ultimately is going to be.

Let’s, for instance, take a look at the second decision mentioned above: What am I going to eat? I’m sure you certainly answer this question more than three times a day in our modern western world full of food offers. And the answer that you ‘consistently‘ give to that question, reflects decisions that can take you through a path of health and energy or down, through ‘Hell Alley’ in health terms.

Think about the millions who suffer from being overweight, diabetes and most of the other civilization’s ailments. The MAIN factor in their ‘destiny‘ is intimately related to the decisions they make when answering that question several times a day: What am I going to eat?

This goes to show that you don’t necessarily need to be the CEO of a big corporation, or even a Small Business Owner to have to face the making decision process regularly. It’s therefore very important, that you understand why taking the process of making decisions serious is for your own benefit, in the short, and in the long run.

Since most of the articles about the DECISION MAKING PROCESS are aimed at Managers and CEOs. I decided to come up with something for the individual. Not based on complicated formulas and checklists, but more on practical stuff. I know I don’t plan my meals using them checklists. And many other decisions I make everyday, are made even without thinking much.[feature_box style=”23″ only_advanced=”There are no title options for the choosen style” width=”350″ alignment=”center”]

“It is in your moments of decision that your DESTINY is shaped.”
Anthony Robbins

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To help with this, here is a list of 10 principles that, as INDIVIDUALS in your personal life, I believe, you should keep in mind when considering the decision making process:

1. Know What You Want In The Long Run

The decision making process has only one purpose, which is to help you take the appropriate actions that will bring you closer to your ultimate goal. Therefore, it’s very important to, at least, know what that ULTIMATE GOAL should be or, what YOU want it to be. That means that you’ve stopped and thought about what you want to achieve.

Let’s, once more, go back to the example of what to eat. The decisions that you make in this aspect of your life, will reflect what will ultimately be your destiny in terms of health and nutrition. For a lot of people, this is actually a non-issue, they don’t even consider food in relation to health in the long run. It’s more of a spur of the moment pleasure thing and, because of this fact, their ‘food’ decisions are based on mood or cravings of the moment.

The point that ALWAYS needs to be kept in mind is that, no matter what decision is taken, even a decision to not make a decision, will have an effect on the person’s future. So, at least from my standpoint, it’s worth it to take the time and kind of determine what you want from the future in the different aspects of your life

2. Be Aware

Humans are creatures of habit. Once a habit has been installed, a decision has been eliminated in advance. You don’t need to THINK anymore about that situation, you just react as a preprogrammed robot. This can definitely be used to our advantage, when we develop habits that work with us to help us achieve what we desire.

On the other hand, there are habits that have been installed by others, that could work in detriment of your wellbeing. Are you aware of them? Let’s take, for instance, the case of smoking. Do you smoke? Did you make a ‘conscious‘ decision to smoke or was it something installed by others at a very young age? Maybe, by your peers and under pressure?

Even though there is lots of evidence out there that smoking can be damaging to your health, I’m no one to judge you for smoking, if you do. My point is only to wake up AWARENESS in you concerning stuff that you do because you’ve always done it. Stuff you do because it’s a HABIT!

There are other habits that seem inoffensive, but are not necessarily beneficial. They have probably not been installed by others. We might just have fallen in that particular routine of doing things.

What do you do when you get home from work? Do you have a routine? Do you AUTOMATICALLY enter your home, put keys down, take shoes off, open the fridge, grab a beer or something to eat, sit on the sofa and turn the TV on? (or some variation of this?)

Again, not trying to judge, just trying to bring your conscious attention to habits that you might have.

Take the time to take a look at your habits and find out if they’re working with you or against you. Only you can determine that, based on the first point above: What do you want it to be your destiny?

3. Use Previous Experience But Remember The Past Is Not The Future

When confronted with the need to make a decision, we will automatically use our past experience to evaluate the circumstances and see what the possibilities are. If a similar situation is linked to bad experiences in our past, we might either avoid the decision or try to decide against it.

One thing that you need to keep in mind is something that Tony Robbins constantly repeats in his seminars: “The past does not equal the future”. Which means that, even though you might have had a bad experience in the past, let’s say in the realm of relationships, it doesn’t mean that every relationship you have in the future will be exactly the same.

In fact, every relationship you have is going to be different because, at least, one of the members of that relationship will be a different person. That makes the equation completely different, even though they seem similar. 1 + 2 is not the same as 1 + 3 although both are addition problems. Do you see my point?

So, when confronting decisions, use your previous experiences wisely, but remember that even though situations are ‘similar’, they’re not the same, and the different variables might make this particular instance have a completely different result than anything you might have experienced in your past.

4. You Will Make Bad Decisions

We’ve heard it a thousand times: “Nobody is perfect” and the point is, IT’S TRUE!

So, you WILL make BAD decisions. There is no way to avoid that. Remember that, even making NO decision at all, might be a BAD decision in the long run.

How do you react when you suddenly discover that you made a bad decision? Is it the end of the world? Well, it depends on the decision you made. But for the majority of the people, it’s not. Obviously, I’m not talking here about decisions about committing crimes. Those are definitely BAD decisions and might mean the ‘end of the world’ for the person making them.

On the other hand, if you think of people like Nelson Mandela or even the Founding Fathers of the United States, you’ll remember that their most important decisions were considered ‘crimes’ at the time. So, even what a ‘bad decision’ is, can be debatable.

The point is that you need to understand that bad decisions will be made and you should learn to live with them and move on. When that happens, learn from your mistake, take responsibility, make the necessary amends and, if possible, change what you’re doing to produce a result that’s more akin to what you expect.

5. Don’t Dwell On Failure

This is related to the previous point and, actually, could be part of it. I decided to separate it, because it’s something that makes people FEAR making decisions.

See failure as an opportunity to learn a lesson. Learn from Edison’s attitude. As Thomas Edison was trying to invent the light bulb, he ‘failed’ or, better said, tried 10,000 times unsuccessfully and was then asked if he had failed. His answer: “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

When you ‘fail’ in your decision making process, find the lesson that can be learned and move on. Imitate Thomas Alva Edison in this aspect.

6. Forget The Other Options

The word ‘DECIDE‘ comes from the Latin ‘DECIDERE‘ that literally means ‘to cut off‘.

This can give you perspective when you make a decision. You’re actually NOT picking one option from a group of options available. In reality, you’re ELIMINATING or CUTTING OFF the other options until only one remains.

This means that you should commit to the decision you’ve made and should do your best to make it work. In “Think and Grow Rich“, Napoleon Hill mentions the example of Henry Ford as someone who was fast to make decisions and slow to change them and that was the reason why Henry Ford was a successful entrepreneur.

Obviously, your decisions should be made taking the different principles mentioned here into account.

Before I leave this point, let me mentioned one example of making a decision by ‘cutting off’ the other options that gets done very, very regularly, namely, the decision to share your life with a particular person by marrying them.

This is a decision that, if it’s to prosper, requires the cutting off of all other options. Not that it always happens though! But only when that’s the case, a marriage has a chance of really succeeding. The same thing with any other decision you make. By cutting off all other options and committing to the one you’ve picked, you will increase your chances of success exponentially.

7. Don’t Be An Emotional Wreck

There is no way to COMPLETELY eliminate emotions from the decision making process. In fact, according to discoveries by Antonio Damasio, emotions are an intrinsic part of decision making. If you don’t have emotions, you CANNOT make decisions.

You’ve probably seen it. You’re helping somebody make a decision, you know, like maybe your significant other or better half, and in the end, even though you present logic and facts, they end up making a decision based on their ‘feelings‘. It might seem completely out of logic, but there is scientific proof that this is the way it is and, it’s unavoidable.

The problem is though, that some people get completely swamped with the feelings part of making decisions, that their fears don’t allow them to make any decisions. What happens in the end, is that others end up making decisions for them or, circumstances become so ‘urgent‘ that they have to just go with the flow.

If this happens regularly, they will end up in a place much different from what they might have wished. Don’t let something similar happen to you.

8. Take Immediate Action

“Never leave the place of a decision without having taken some action in its direction“. This is wise advice because it immediately starts building momentum in the appropriate direction. Never forget that whenever something is DONE, you will get a result.

And if you get a result, this will improve your belief in yourself and your decision making.

9. Be Courageous

To become a decision maker that takes the lead of his or her life, you have to be a courageous person. Given that some of your decisions will be bad, you might have to suffer the consequences of what happens after results start to happen.

Nobody knows the future and there’s no guarantee that everything is going to be smooth in your decision making process. This doesn’t mean that you should stop being proactive and making decisions.

Even if you DON’T do anything and don’t make any active decisions and even if you don’t take any positive action, there is NO GUARANTEE that everything is gonna be alright.

So, why not increase the chances of obtaining what you want by causing changes in your circumstances through making decisions independently of what could happen? If you take the other options into account, chances are your decision making process will bring you more successes than failures.

10. Trust Your Gut Feeling (But Make Sure It’s Trained)

This is a big one. Should you trust your ‘gut feeling’? Successful people claim to do this all the time. Even when logic and facts point them in one direction, if their gut feeling points them in another, they might go with their gut feeling.

This gut feeling is also called intuition, and some people are very good ‘in tune’ with their gut feeling.

My mother had an aunt, for instance, that had a VERY GOOD relationship with her ‘intuition’. Her ‘gut feeling’ or ‘inner voice’ as she called it, saved her from snakes in the jungles of Venezuela when she was a little girl, and from a traffic accident that claimed the life of her best friend in France, as an adult. It even ‘told her‘ NOT to go to a bomb shelter during World War II when she was living in Marseille, France. In the end, she managed to live 107 (1897-2004) years and died in peace from old age.

The thing is, not everybody has that ‘fine tuning’ or ‘relationship’ with their gut feeling or intuition. If you’re one of the ones that doesn’t have a history of listening to your gut feeling, you need to train yourself and start ‘paying attention‘.

You also have to train your ‘mindset‘. Are you a someone with a mainly positive mindset? Or with a mainly negative mindset? I’m of the opinion that your main mindset inclination will influence what your gut feeling tells you. This is why it’s important to train your mindset appropriately.

Then, you can start trusting your gut feeling in small things and slowly go from there to bigger decisions and, please, remember the other points and take them into account.

Bottom Line

You make decisions every day, whether you like it or not. Your decision making process is affected by many things around you.

Facts and Logic, as the base for the decision making process,  should be tempered with what you really want to achieve in the long run with your life.

You will make some really bad decisions at some point, but being flexible and courageous will help you learn your lessons and move on, instead of dwelling on your mistakes forever.

Let your gut feeling and emotions play their role in your decision making, but don’t let them fill you so much with FEAR, that you cannot make any decent decisions anymore.

And, in the end, as soon as you make a decision, TAKE SOME ACTION in its direction to start seeing results fast.

Obviously, to be able to get what you REALLY want, you first must know WHAT IS IT that you want. You have to have clarity in that respect.

Once you know what you really want to achieve in life, how do you go about obtaining it?

This is something that actually should be taught in school, because we ALL want something but only few actually know how to systematically go about obtaining it.

Don’t get me wrong, knowing the HOW TO won’t guarantee that you will obtain anything. Why is that so? Well, no matter what, obtaining what you really want in life requires EFFORT on your part. It also most likely will require TIME. But if you’re consistent in your applying of whatever it is you wish, you WILL eventually obtain it, if you don’t give up.

So, let’s get down to it and see what specific steps are a must to make your dreams a reality. Let’s start at nothing and see how it goes up in a spiral like fashion.

Step 1 – Your Potential

As I said at the beginning, you have to FIRST know what you really want to achieve. But, you also have to BELIEVE that you have the innate ability to obtain it. In other words, you have an untapped POTENTIAL to achieve what you want.

Notice that all this happens FIRST in your head. This is the reason why the ‘Law Of Attraction’ states that THOUGHTS have power. It ALL starts in the mind. And, if we’re honest, it’s 100% true. Look around yourself, wherever you are. Do you see something created by humans? Of course you do, otherwise, how the hell are you reading this? 🙂

If you stop for a second, you’ll have to accept that EVERYTHING humans have created, started FIRST in their mind. They had an IDEA that was the starting point for their creation.

The same with you! Your mind has the potential, through THOUGHTS and IDEAS, to create any type of reality for you. You just have to believe this is true. So, to start, you go from NOTHING to having an idea, a wish or a goal that you want to achieve. This is YOUR POTENTIAL!

Step 2 – Taking Action

Now imagine the first person, thousands of years ago who THOUGHT “Damn, I don’t want to eat off the floor anymore. My back hurts and I’m tired of bending all the way down. I guess I could elevate everything and put it on some platform. That would be easy to reach and my back won’t hurt as much. Hmmm!”

What did he have to DO now? Well, the fact that we do have TABLES now, proves that he did TAKE ACTION and created a table, I don’t care how rudimentary it was, it was something. Maybe three legs instead of four, we don’t know, but SOMETHING was done. Somebody else must have seen that and a viral trend was established to the extent that the majority of humanity uses tables now. So, what was the KEY of his success? TAKING ACTION!!!!

So, once you have your IDEA, WISH or GOAL, you have to TAKE ACTION. The more action you take, the better. In fact, ‘self-help gurus’ talk about not just ‘taking action’, but about ‘taking MASSIVE action‘. Only if you DO SOMETHING, something will happen with your idea, wish or goal.

When you take action, your thoughts start ‘materializing‘ themselves. When I say this, it sounds VERY logical and it has nothing to do with the ‘esoteric’. It’s just common sense, you could even think. But, you’d have no clue of the amount of ideas that have just ‘evaporated‘ because their creators simply didn’t take action.

Step 3 – Obtain Results

Once you take actions, something amazing is going to happen. You’ll get RESULTS!

Ok, maybe the results you get at the beginning are not exactly what you were expecting, but you WILL get some sort of result. Think about this. What if you just ‘can’t be bothered‘ doing anything, what kind of results would you get? That’s easy to figure out… NOTHING!

But if you do SOMETHING, you WILL get some results. Getting results basically means that you’ve set a cause in motion. In other words, you’ve started a chain reaction that will have some kind of effect in the end. If you keep doing that, it will eventually produce the result that you want and, even if this result is small, it should be something to celebrate!

As a way of understanding this, it will help to consider for a bit what’s a classical plot in ALL movies that deal with ‘TIME TRAVELING‘. And what’s that? Well, that if you CHANGE something in the past, it will cause changes in the present. Isn’t it true that EVERY single time travel movie or book deals with that? Well, it’s time for you to realize that TODAY is tomorrow’s past, and if you change something TODAY, it will cause changes in your future, just make sure that future is more in line with what you really want.

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TODAY is tomorrow’s past,
and if you change something TODAY,
it will cause changes in your tomorrow!

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Step 4 – Your BELIEF of what is possible

Let’s go back for a second to step number 1. Remember, you had to BELIEVE that you had the potential to achieve something. At that moment however, it was just something that you ‘potentially‘ could achieve. You’ve never done it before. It was more like Faith!

Now, however, you’ve produced RESULTS and these prove that you CAN achieve more than what you’ve achieved so far. Your potential has become reality and your FAITH/BELIEF grows exponentially and turns into CERTAINTY. Obviously, having results under your belt gives you confidence that you can do more. And through this, your potential increases.

Think about the Olympic athletes trying to break records. At the beginning they just believe or have Faith they can, but they’ve NEVER done it before, but then, they DO IT! That gives them more confidence and then they go ahead, take action by practicing consistently and after a while, they break their previous record and sometimes that goes on and on several times. Why is that? It’s because every time you achieve something, your mind sees it now as NORMAL and the bar gets set a bit higher.

It just spirals upwards!

What happens is that once you get to that point of believing you can more, you automagically go back to step 1, but with the bar set higher, which results in more and so, you end up achieving much more than what you thought was even possible for you at the beginning.

If you keep consistently on a path like this, do you think you’ll get what you want? You bet!

Just To Be Clear

In this entry I’ve described the general path, which successful self made people go through to achieve their sometimes unbelievable goals. They never go from 0 to success in 1 second. There are ALWAYS steps in between that the public might not have seen, but that are always there.

On the other hand, there is always the possibility that you’ll hit obstacles on your path to success. You might not get the results that you want, once you start taking action. What to do when this happens? Just give up and stop? Never!

Keep taking action, just change the action you’re taking. Remember, every action generates a reaction, but no action generates NOTHING. In simple words, when something doesn’t go your way, do something a bit different, assess the results by evaluating if it’s what you want and, if it isn’t, do something a bit different again and reevaluate again.

If it is what you expected, RINSE AND REPEAT!

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