Your values drive your success
Decisions are difficult for most people. Especially, the decisions that you make when you hit a fork in the road. Have you ever looked back and realized that a different decision made at a critical juncture would have changed your life? You chose to say yes to going out on a weeknight and it led to meeting the person of your dreams. You chose to say no, and you missed meeting the person of your dreams. How do you know which decision to make? How can you know that you missed an opportunity that you weren’t present to miss? Is your life just a string of lucky, or unlucky, decisions that brought you to today?
These questions are challenging and nearly impossible to answer. So, why dwell on them? Why not focus on making good decisions, knowing that you will have both bad and good luck? Also knowing that the better your decisions are in whole, the more likely you will lead a fulfilled life.
Volumes of literature are available teaching people how to make better decisions. Most are complex, time consuming and nearly impossible to execute. They involve decision trees, forecasting outcomes, assigning percentages and the like. You almost have to have a statistics degree to follow them. However, one theme seems to exist across the decision making literature. That theme is built around core values. To make a good decision, it should be tied to one of your core values. Therefore, to make a good decision, you should establish your core values first. Then, the decisions mostly take care of themselves.
If having a meaningful relationship is a core value, then make decisions that will give you a chance to meet the right person. Go out on a weeknight if you have the chance. If advancement in your career is a core value and you need to wake up early, then don’t go out on a weeknight. When two core values conflict, figure out which is more important and make the decision that aligns with it.
Reaching success is a struggle with many roadblocks along the way. But, most people add to those roadblocks by being indecisive at best, and making horrible decisions at worst. If you want to improve your decision making ability, figure out what is most important to you first. Then, tie your decisions to your values and you will greatly raise the chances of your success.