I would be extremely surprised if there were some hands not raised. Every one of us makes mistakes and gets decisions wrong. We should never fear making a wrong turn or following the wrong route as long as we learn from our errors. But how can we learn to make more effective decisions so that we have fewer disasters?

The seed

Decisions are the seeds that we plant now that grows into the tree that represents everything that happens in our futures. Everything that is happening now, all the emotions we are feeling are the result of decisions made in the past. Making good and effective decisions now will shape our future and help us achieve our goals.

Clouding our judgement

Unfortunately we put obstacles in the way when making decisions. We have to get rid of these obstacles before we can make effective decisions that can provide a happier and more fulfilled life. The influence of strong emotions is one such obstacle. Strong emotions block the path to all of the minds' faculties. Just think of when we get angry and how our minds are cluttered with thoughts of violence, revenge and destruction. We don't seem to have the ability to think positively and rationally. To have access to all our minds resources we need to make decisions from a position of calm.

Fear is another emotion that detracts from a clear thought process. In order to make a decision free from fear we need to develop courage. "He who dares wins". If controlling emotions is difficult, wait until we have calmed down before making any important decisions.

The subconscious mind

The subconscious mind is far more powerful than the conscious mind. Our best decisions come from the subconscious mind. So how do we utilise this powerful part of the brain?

Sleep on a decision. Whilst asleep the subconscious mind is trying to find solutions. This is why solutions seem to pop up even though we are thinking and concentrating on something else. When we come across a problem, a signal is sent to the subconscious mind to hunt out a solution. It will look for this solution discreetly in the background whilst we are getting on with the other activities of the day.

Too much information

One of the pitfalls of effective decision making is overkill; too much information. We often think that we need to collect every snippet of information before we make that decision. The truth is that we can probably never gather every bit of information surrounding our problem. Collect all readily available information and make a decision from there. It will be the best available choice.

Visualisation

Visualising the outcome of our decision will help decide if it is the outcome we desire. Sit peacefully and imagine the outcome from all the possible alternative decisions. Visualisation is not recommended as the sole reason for making a particular decision but it will help support a choice.

Left, right

Our brains are divided into the right side and the left side. The right side creates our intuition whilst the left side is for reasoning and logic. It is never a good idea to base a decision on logic or intuition. We need to learn to use both sides of our brain thus using our minds to the fullest.

What are friends for?

If we have an idea and a friend has another idea, we don't end up with two ideas; we have a flood of ideas of which we feed of each other. Quite often this leads to brainstorming where ideas and solutions just keep rolling off of the mind; albeit some of these might appear to be ridiculous. Talking to others helps in the effective decision process as more information becomes available. Beware though, a friends perspective can be based on their own personal experiences and may not be right for us in this particular scenario. Seek their thoughts but don't consider their ideas as necessarily being fact.

Resistance

Resistance to a decision can come from within our selves. There is a part of us that wants to go one way, whilst the other part wants to jump in a different direction. This inner conflict prevents us from making good and proper decisions. Inner conflicts can be overcome by using an NLP technique called "parts integration".

Fight

If we have a bust up with a friend, we may decide never to talk to that person again. Is this a good idea?

Probably not. This decision would have been made out of anger and based on the last memory of that friend. We have to look at our friendship as a whole and the history of that person. Look at the full picture and not just at the last event. Distributing the weight accordingly will help us see the effective answer.

With peace, faith and calmness in our hearts we can make more effective decisions and less likely to trip ourselves up.

How fantastic is that?

Terry Norrington

www.whatisthemeaningoffaith.com