Life or Death - How To Make Decisions

Decision making is part and parcel of life. Rarely does a day go by where we don't have to make decisions. Even deciding what you wore today, or what you had for breakfast was a decision. Everyone moment of your life is proceeded by a thought which becomes a choice and then an action. Decision making creates your life and your experiences.
Making decisions can be fun, light-hearted, and exciting! Making decisions and choices puts you in the driving seat of creating the life that you want for yourself. The art of making decisions is a wonderful demonstration of you engaging with life. You're involved and engaged, and it's crazy exciting!
Naturally we are designed to move forward. Our lives are meant to progress and unfold like a story. Remaining stagnant is a) boring as hell and b) life-draining. Your life is meant to flourish and grow. You are meant to move forward.
I'll admit, I've made some really bad decisions in my life and absolutely hated the results. I cringe when I think of some of things I've done! Some decisions have been completely daft - like staying out partying the night before an important exam - and others have effected other people greatly and changed the direction of my life entirely - like ending my engagement, taking a career break from teaching, and deciding to emigrate to the UK.
Some of those moments where wild and scary and making some of those decisions was down right difficult, but what I do know is this;
Every decision you make is unique.
When we make decisions, they reflect where we are at that particular moment in our lives, and everything we've learnt and experienced helps us to make better and more mature choices.
Problems creep in when we try making decisions based on choices we've made in the past. Dreading making decisions is usually linked to past stuff that didn't go quite so well, and this can dishearten us from making decisions going forward.
Using our past as a guideline for making decisions can paralyse us with fear from making new decisions today.
We can start over analysing, we create 'what if' scenarios in our heads, and we simply freak ourselves out. The million dollar question when it comes to decisions making is this;
Is making this decision life or death?
Most of the decisions we make won't see us injured or hurt. Our egos may get a bit battered and bruised but that's ok, we can deal with that. Thinking in this way liberates our thinking. It gives us new perspective and the ability to say HELL YES!
It is our permission slip to take chances.

Easing the pressure on ourselves to get everything just right or to constantly make the perfect decision allows us to make mistakes and to learn from them quickly. Not every decision you make will be bad. In fact, making decisions can open up a host of opportunities that were not there to begin with. Our life experience tells us that even if we do make a sucky decision, so what! ;
You can bounce back!
Making good decisions becomes easier when we are kinder on ourselves. We harvest our inner wisdom to make mature decisions. There will be times when we are thrust into emotional and stressful situations that will require us to make choices. During these moments it is 100% ok to step back, take a breath and;
Pause.
From my experience, making decisions when I've been thinking irrationally has usually resulted in a few regrets. When I think back on those times, I often wish I have have just paused, calmed down, and then acted.
This is the beauty of hindsight and growth. We learn. When making decisions now I ask myself 3 things;
How will this effect me tomorrow? How will this effect me next week? How will this effect me next year?
Asking these questions allows time for reflection and consideration. It allows our intuitive voice to rise up and guide us.
Decision making is like having a beautiful relationship with life. It shapes our destiny and teaches us how to fall deeply in love with our ability to create a life we love.
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Do you find it difficult making decisions? What holds you back? Or do you have a tried and tested way that helps you make ground breaking decisions? I'd love to hear them in the comments below xxx