Decision Making

When a child enters this world, he is dependent on others for everything. Mostly, the family makes decisions for him. As time passes and the child grows up, he begins to decide for himself on small issues like which outfit or color to wear, which toy to play with or which cartoon to watch.

As the child grows older, still, he starts getting more independent and starts making decisions on his own and for his own life. All our life we eat the fruit of the decisions we make. Thus, we can say that Decision Making is one of the most important skills for a happy and successful life.

The knack to making the right decision helps you deal with tough choices.

What is Decision Making

With the right decision making skills, you can make correct and timely decisions that lead to your own individual success, and your team’s success as well. The end result of this is a final action or opinion from all your available possibilities. Also, decision making is a problem-solving process which comes to an end when an individual reaches a satisfactory solution.

Effective decision making as a process also involves certain steps or techniques once we decide on some possible solutions to solve a problem. Some of them are listed below:

• Weighing the advantages and disadvantages, and the pros and cons of a possible solution that can solve a problem.
• Choice of a solution that has the highest probability of leading to success with minimal risk.
• Examining alternatives if the chosen solution does not work.
• Taking advice from trusted sources or people.
• Reaching a final decision which can be implemented.

Having said all of the above, we cannot ignore the fact that the majority of our decisions are made unconsciously or even randomly by us. At times, we do not even realize that we are choosing something above the other or forming an opinion that can last for a lifetime.

Decision making is so fast and unplanned because, in this hectic and fast moving life, if we sit down to weigh pros and cons, plan an alternative or even just seek advice, we think we will waste our precious time.

Case Study

When I passed my 10th board exams, I was the second highest scorer in Science among 300 students. My father was extremely happy and wanted me to take it up as a subject for higher studies and become a Surgeon.

On the other hand, I was interested in taking up Psychology as a subject and make a career out of that (as I was always interested in studying human behavior). After many rounds of discussions and advice from elders I took up Psychology and went on to do my Master’s in it.

Today, I am a Counseling Psychologist with a good career. But, my father still thinks I could have done better in life (financially), if I would have listened to him.

I do not regret my decision because I am enjoying what I am doing professionally and also making a good living out of it. I made this decision with a cool mind, after discussing it with my elders and looking at the career prospects.

I am extremely happy with it because it was well planned and not just a random decision taken impulsively and my father somewhere respects the same.

Conclusion

It is fairly common that we make decisions without planning or too much thinking. It is not a very good idea as mostly we end up regretting such decisions.

We make even major or big decisions this way but we forget that a little effort on our part can save a lot of pain in the future. As I said earlier, throughout our lives, we eat the fruits of our decisions. So, why not devote some time and planning in making decisions better or making our lives better!!!