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This is a guest post by Andrei Mihai from Zmelifetips

Our lives are dominated by strings of events, that revolve all around us, as a consequence to anything we do, be it quiting your job for another, taking your daughter to school or just walking on the street. Every kind of activity or action that we undertake, no matter how small, has an effect on us and on the people around us. Every action, has a reaction.This unfortunately brings with it a lot of pressure, for most individuals, when faced with a more or less important decision. Fear of consequences, cloud their judgments and they soon begin to become indecisive.

Decisions make you powerful, active, focused, and ready to face your day. Indecision makes you procrastinate, lose initiative, gumption, and get up and go. So, in truth, making a good decision isn’t necessarily conditioned by outside variables, like money, other people or events and so on, but rather by your ability to be decisive.

There’s no real secret to becoming a decisive person, after all it’s just a mindset. So if you put your mind to it and keep telling yourself you know what you want from life, you’ll soon start becoming a more decisive person. However, here’s a few tips and techniques that will help you overpass the hump of uncertainty and make you a true leader of your life.

1. Think fast. When faced with a decision, do it fast. Don’t think too much about what might happen after you undertake the respective action. What’s done is done. Small decisions like choosing what to eat for dinner shouldn’t take more then a minute. If you’re faced with a major decision you shouldn’t take more then 10 minute to make it or 1-2 hours when you have to do some information gathering. The more you do it, the faster you’ll become and the more decisive you’ll become.

2. Believe. Keep telling and believe in yourself as a decisive individual. Don’t denigrate yourself for being indecisive.

3. Be instinctual. Some decisions, no matter how much you think them over, can’t seem to reach a favorable end. The longer you think about them, the more problems and obstacles you’ll find in your path. This is where you have to turn to your natural instincts, to guide you through. Let your gut speak out.

4. Get out of the box. Forget about your preconceptions and fixed ideas about anything in particular. Clarity is extremely important for taking a good decision, so keeping an open mind is a great way to put things into perspective and in term make the best the decision.

5. Don’t be afraid. Earlier in the article I mentioned that the biggest cause for indecisiveness is fear of the consequences. While having reserves, before taking an important decision, is very natural you shouldn’t let them overwhelm you. Don’t be afraid to make a decision and learn to embrace failure as much as success.

6. Visualize the outcome. Look at yourself from the outside and picture you as a decisive person. How would I act then? Also when faced with a decision, visualize yourself in the completion process and then in the aftermath. Then start asking yourself, like you’ve already taken the decision and completed the task: was it worth my time? did the benefits outweigh the disadvantages? and so on.

7. Be prepare to screw up. Sometimes life takes us into directions we’d wish we never went. A thought of going back in time and taking the road on the left, always crosses our minds, but what’s done is done and you should keep it that way. Such things in life are inevitable, so the first thing you should do when it happens, is not to feel bad about it. Just look at it as a life experience, as a step up in your progression towards a complete life. There’s no such thing as a good or bad decision.

8. Act. Don’t sit on your butt all day, thinking how to act. Be proactive, take the initiative and act without fear of the outcome. Any decision is better then none at all.

Photo courtesy of naughton321


To Your Success,