Method - How to decide - Making Decisions - Articles about Psychology

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There's more to making a decision than choosing between two or more alternatives.

Making a wise decision involves analyzing the situation and coming to logical conclusions. It means looking at the results of the different alternatives and seeing which one would cause the least damage.

However, it is rarely as simple as that. Usually each alternative has ramifications and several alternatives play against each other. In other words, if you select one alternative that will ease the problem in one way but create a greater problem in another way. Therefore, it means looking at the greater ramifications of the situation and the greater damage that can be caused by accepting any specific concept or option.

Sometimes it is necessary to make compromises. Sometimes it is necessary to create additional options since the available options are going to cause too many problems. Sometimes it is necessary to resolve secondary issues or issues that existed beforehand prior to resolving the issue at hand. Sometimes steps need to be taken immediately even though the issue is not resolved.

How can you, even with the assistance of your confidant, determine the direction that is best? Are you so personally involved in the issue that you cannot see the big picture yourself?

It is sometimes better not to decide. It is sometimes better to leave all of the options open in order not to do any damage.

In other cases it is a good idea to delay your decision until the last minute. In that way you can see how things fall into place. Of course, this option comes with its own problems.

In adny event a good decision will make you feel liberated and free. It will free you from the doubts that you had previously.

It will be clear that you made a good decision because you feel good about it because it caused the least damage to others because it took into account all of the options and because it selected the best option from among the possibilities.

A good decision will help prepare you for dealing with the problems that it caused - and it usually does cause auxiliary difficulties.

So you're probably asking how do you make these decisions. After all, that was the title of this page.

Well, there's not format for making them. There is no simple method which works. However, the way to do it is to take into account all of the aspects of this page, all of the issues that are written on this page and then to choose the option that causes the least reverberations and problems. It is choosing the option that you can live with best over the course of time and it is the option that you have thought about clearly and objectively while distancing yourself from the issue itself and which makes you happy that you have done the best thing under the circumstances.

Thus, the method in this case is to determine how you feel after making the decision. If you feel the most happy with your particular decision, then you have done it in the best possible way.