Notes on Decision Making

Last week, we talked about Dis­cern­ment and how it is about hon­ing a gut feel of what is right and wrong. Two weeks from now, I am going to talk about HOW to hone this gut feel exactly. After that I am going to dis­cuss spe­cific steps to make well-discerned deci­sions. For today’s post how­ever, let’s just step back and talk about Deci­sion Mak­ing in gen­eral. Let this be Deci­sion Mak­ing 101.

Instead of com­ing up with a longish arti­cle on Mak­ing Deci­sions, I have decided (hehehe. Sooo witty!) to write ran­dom snippets/notes gath­ered from dif­fer­ent sources. Some of the notes here are points from Dis­cern­ment talks I gave in the past and I was greatly inspired by this arti­cle from UBALT​.EDU.

1. The Latin word Decido has two mean­ings: “to decide” and “to fall off”. Thus, plants are called “decid­u­ous” if their leaves fall off. To decide then is really some kind of falling. To decide involves some kind of “tak­ing the plunge”. Accord­ing to the great Fr. Roque Fer­riols, a time comes in your life when you have all the data you need, and then you decide—“lundagin mo beybe!” (Make the jump!)
2. The fear of mak­ing seri­ous deci­sions is called deci­do­pho­bia, coined by Wal­ter Kauf­mann at Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity in 1973.
3. When mak­ing your deci­sions, put your­self first. It’s impor­tant that you’re bet­ter off as a result of mak­ing the deci­sion. And not just in the result that you get, but more espe­cially, as a per­son. The deci­sion should allow you to main­tain who you are, with­out compromise.
4. Decision-making usu­ally involves a three-pronged process:

   a. It is trig­gered by a recog­ni­tion of a need: A dis­sat­is­fac­tion within one­self;
   b. A deci­sion to change–to fill the void or need;
   c. A con­scious ded­i­ca­tion to imple­ment the decision.

   Deci­sion then is not just about what we want to do, but what we HAVE to do. There is a cer­tain “ought-ness” to real, life-changing deci­sions trig­gered by the need to change some­thing within ourselves.

5. Never make any seri­ous deci­sion when you are overly dis­tressed, angry, hurt, des­per­ate or fright­ened. Do not decide when you are FORCED to decide by some­one else! Do not decide just to get revenge or to harm some­one else. Do not make deci­sion when you are inca­pable of ratio­nal thought. Make deci­sion for the right rea­sons and when you are calm and emo­tion­ally quiet. Learn to wait.
6. While it is (usu­ally) easy to decide between “right” and “wrong”, and it is easy to tell “good from “bad”, deci­sions become more dif­fi­cult when it is between “good” and “bet­ter”. The tough­est deci­sions of all are those we have to make between bad and worse.
7. Do not make deci­sions that are not yours to make. Don’t waste your time mak­ing deci­sions that do not have to be made.
8. Be sure to choose based on what is right, not who is right.
9. Some peo­ple decide by ask­ing whether the deci­sion is “God’s will” in their lives. What is God’s will any­way? St. Ignatius de Loy­ola says that God’s will is found in the inter­sec­tion where my greatest/deepest desire meets the world’s great­est need. Eve Ensler, who wrote the Vagina Mono­logues, puts it this way: “When we give to the world what we want the most for our­selves, we heal the bro­ken part inside of us.”
10. Once the deci­sion has been made, don’t look back. Do not second-guess, and do not regret a deci­sion. Put the “what ifs” aside. It was the right thing to do at the time. Now focus on what is right at this time.