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The Tao of Deciding

By on August 23, 2018

First of all, full disclosure: I am a lover of alliteration, not an expert in Taoism.

As a coach and facilitator, however, I am an expert in supporting people and teams to make better decisions and take better actions.

As I was thinking of a title for this article, The Tao of Decisions popped into my head and when my Googling turned up this definition on Merriam-Webster “the art or skill of doing something in harmony with the essential nature of the thing”, I knew it was the perfect title for this article. Why? Because in more than three decades of helping people to make decisions that will help them thrive in life and work, the tools I’ve developed all come back to supporting them to make choices that are in harmony with their true nature.

That is easier said than done. When it comes to making decisions, most of your daily choices – for better or worse – are unconscious. This is simultaneously what makes life easier and what makes it harder. The automatic subconscious choices you make can keep you stuck in who you are rather than moving you towards who you want to be.

How can you experience better results and less stress from your decisions?

Pick the Right Time

It’s hard to make good decisions when you’re too busy or exhausted to really think things through. Most people intuitively get this, so they tend to put off making decisions until they have the time or energy to put into it. Unfortunately, postponing decisions until some mythical time when you’ll have a ton of free time and energy is likely to result in a huge backlog of unmade decisions. This backlog creates a domino effect. Each unmade decision topples over your ability to make another decision and each unmade decision takes up your energy, so postponing choices exacerbates that feeling of exhaustion and overwhelm.

Fortunately, there’s a way to hack this. Researchers have identified that we have a finite ability to make decisions each day because each decision made uses up energy. All of those e-mails you answer before you settle down to work on that important project are using up your valuable decision-making energy! When you schedule time at the very beginning of your day to make important decisions while you’re fresh, you will actually free up energy instead of using it up.

Honor Doubt

When people are caught in a cycle of doubt about which choice to make, they tend to get frustrated and impatient with themselves. This creates stress and makes it even harder to decide. Instead, get curious about what you need to know or do in order to make your decision. When you aren’t sure what to choose, it might be because you haven’t taken the time to clearly visualize your desired outcome.

My husband has a saying that we use often both at home and at work, “Where there’s doubt, there is no doubt.” When we are stressed about a decision, we use this phrase to remind us that we need to give ourselves permission to not choose. This takes the pressure off of deciding and helps us get curious about what we need to know or do in order to decide. Rather than focusing on making the decision, we focus on determining the next step we need to take. The next step tends to fall into one of the following categories.

 

Visualize the Desired Outcome

It’s common for people to get caught up in making the decision before they clearly define what they want to create, experience or achieve. One of the most common areas I see this scenario is when a client is trying to decide if they “should” quit their job, accept a job offer, get married or end a relationship. If you are focused on choosing between one, two or more alternatives, a typical strategy is to look at the pros and cons of each. The problem with this is that this only compares how the alternatives stack up against each other, not how well they fit with your vision for your desired life, work or relationship. In all of the above areas, it takes time and effort to sit down and think about what you really want, but it will allow you to make your decision in less time and, more importantly, feel more confident about it.

Define the Boundaries

In addition to being clear on your ideal outcome, you need to be aware of the values, principles and parameters that must be considered in achieving the outcome. When purchasing an item, for example, there might be a definite budget that you want to stay within and a need for it to be locally made and environmentally friendly.

Expand Options

If the above two areas of exploration don’t help you decide, it might be time to get some outside help to expand your options. If the only choices available are black or white and you’ve never even heard of blue, pink or polka dots, let alone that they’re an option, you’re going to feel stuck if neither black nor white hold much appeal for you. In the vacation example, you might send an e-mail out to a bunch of friends explaining what you are looking for and see if they have any recommendations of vacation spots that would fit all your requirements.

If you apply these tips to any areas where you are stuck making decisions, not only will it help you to move forward in making a choice, it will build a foundation of awareness that will have huge payoffs in many other areas of your life.

 

About Andrea Jacques

Andrea Jacques is the founder of Kyosei Consulting and the author of Wabi-Sabi Wisdom: Inspiration for an Authentic Life (available on Amazon.com). She has spent more than 30 years developing the potential of people and businesses worldwide, five of which were in Japan. A dynamic speaker, coach, and facilitator, her work integrates spiritual insight with top-tier leadership, wellness and sustainability consulting to help individuals and organizations build thriving, purpose-driven cultures where employees know their work truly matters. She can be contacted through her website at www.kyoseiconsulting.com