making your own decisions essay

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“To thine own self be true.” ~William Shakespeare

No one knows the real you but you. Sometimes it is true that we don’t know ourselves. That’s because we’ve lost ourselves, or maybe because we never knew ourselves to begin with.

I grew up a long time ago on a hill on Bentley road in Puyallup, Washington. I was a very quiet, shy, and reserved little girl. Today, I am a forty-two-year-old woman. I am still introverted , but I am learning to be more assertive.

As a co-dependent people pleaser , I grew up with a lot of self-doubt and shame. I didn’t have a sense of self at all. I was like a leaf that the wind blows away, and I needed to be more of a tree with deep roots, grounded and rooted in love.

Growing up, I received a lot of conflicting and negative messages from my family, such as “you are loved but you are flawed.” I was hungry for the approval of others.

I learned not to trust my ability to make a good decision because the people in my life did not validate my view of reality. My brother used to tease me a lot. I tried speaking up about the mistreatment, but my parents didn’t take my complaints seriously.

They did little to address the situation because of their high levels of shame. It just got swept under the rug, and so I got the message that it wouldn’t matter if I spoke up, because those in authority would not protect me.

It took me a long time to see that I could have a different opinion than other people and still be loved and accepted.

When I did make a decision, I got the impression that people are in your life to change your mind, and guilt and shame were good tactics to achieve that.

This has made it extremely difficult for me to make and stick to decisions.

If you think you aren’t qualified to make a good choice then you’re going to be afraid to make any choice.

I have often run around asking multiple people, “What should I do? What should I do?” I invited them to give me input. But then I was angry with them for “telling me what to do.”

What I was really telling myself is that my opinion didn’t matter. I valued other people’s opinions far above my own. I disowned myself. Somewhere in my mind I thought that they must have known better. After all, what in the world could I know? I grew up believing that if you think you know something then you are very proud.

But there is no shame in speaking from a place of truth.

You do know something and that is not a bad thing. In fact, you probably know more than you think you know. But thinking you don’t know anything keeps you from taking the good advice you would give yourself. And it keeps you dependent on other people.

People seem to lose respect for people who are wishy-washy and can’t make their own decisions. In other words, people who can’t think for themselves are also people who don’t respect themselves because they don’t respect their own opinions.

It takes a lot of courage to stand up and take personal responsibility for your life and actually “own” your decisions.

I have let others play the scapegoat by allowing them to be my decision makers. For example, because of my lack of assertiveness in my marriage, I was handing over my brain and responsibilities to my husband.

I think it was because of fear but also laziness on my part. But no one can really be happy this way. You won’t be happy, and the other people won’t be either when they hear you blame them for your choices.

Ask for advice if you feel you need it, but take it with a grain of salt. In the end, you are the one who needs to live with your decision. The gurus won’t be the one with the consequences of your choice.

Don’t be so afraid of making mistakes. Fear of the choice being “bad” keeps you stuck. Accept that you are human. As far as I know, all humans make mistakes. The only ones that won’t give you grace are the ones that have no grace for themselves. So lighten up a bit.

I know some truths that I need to stop denying and start accepting. That unsettled feeling in my gut is there for a reason.

It’s time for me to stop sweeping things under the rug and start having the courage to speak up. I need to tell myself that I am relevant and my opinions matter, and that by standing my ground I can be a positive force for change, because I have something to say that someone out there may need to hear.

I have come to the conclusion that I need to trust my best judgment, stick to my decision, follow through, and let the cards fall where they may.

I think the important thing to realize is that life has a way of working out. Even if we make the worst possible choice, we still have the freedom to make adjustments.

So let yourself try what feels right for you, and don’t worry about making the “wrong” decision. One of the best things I have learned is that the world is a place to explore, and it will embrace you if you embrace it.

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The Art of Decision-Making

By Joshua Rothman

In July of 1838, Charles Darwin was twenty-nine years old and single. Two years earlier, he had returned from his voyage aboard H.M.S. Beagle with the observations that would eventually form the basis of “ On the Origin of Species .” In the meantime, he faced a more pressing analytical problem. Darwin was considering proposing to his cousin Emma Wedgwood, but he worried that marriage and children might impede his scientific career. To figure out what to do, he made two lists. “Loss of time,” he wrote on the first. “Perhaps quarreling. . . . Cannot read in the evenings. . . . Anxiety and responsibility. Perhaps my wife won’t like London; then the sentence is banishment and degradation into indolent, idle fool.” On the second, he wrote, “Children (if it Please God). Constant companion (and friend in old age). . . . Home, & someone to take care of house.” He noted that it was “intolerable to think of spending one’s whole life, like a neuter bee, working, working. . . . Only picture to yourself a nice soft wife on a sofa with good fire and books and music perhaps.”

Beneath his lists, Darwin scrawled, “Marry, Marry, Marry QED.” And yet, Steven Johnson writes, in “Farsighted: How We Make the Decisions That Matter the Most,” “we have no evidence of how he actually weighed these competing arguments against each other.” Johnson, the author of “ How We Got to Now ” and other popular works of intellectual history, can’t help but notice the mediocrity of Darwin’s decision-making process. He points out that Benjamin Franklin used a more advanced pro-and-con technique: in what Franklin called “Prudential Algebra,” a numerical weight is assigned to each listed item, and counterbalancing items are then eliminated. (“If I find a Reason pro equal to some two Reasons con, I strike out the three . . . and thus proceeding I find at length where the Ballance lies,” Franklin explained to a friend.) Even this approach, Johnson writes, is slapdash and dependent upon intuition. “The craft of making farsighted choices—decisions that require long periods of deliberation, decisions whose consequences might last for years,” he concludes, “is a strangely under-appreciated skill.”

We say that we “decide” to get married, to have children, to live in particular cities or embark on particular careers, and in a sense this is true. But how do we actually make those choices? One of the paradoxes of life is that our big decisions are often less calculated than our small ones are. We agonize over what to stream on Netflix, then let TV shows persuade us to move to New York; buying a new laptop may involve weeks of Internet research, but the deliberations behind a life-changing breakup could consist of a few bottles of wine. We’re hardly more advanced than the ancient Persians, who, Herodotus says, made big decisions by discussing them twice: once while drunk, once while sober.

Johnson hopes to reform us. He examines a number of complex decisions with far-reaching consequences—such as the choice, made by President Barack Obama and his advisers, to green-light the raid on Osama bin Laden’s presumed compound, in Abbottabad, Pakistan—and then shows how the people in charge drew upon insights from “decision science,” a research field at the intersection of behavioral economics, psychology, and management. He thinks that we should apply such techniques to our own lives.

I’ve never had to decide whether to launch a covert raid on a suspected terrorist compound, but I’ve made my share of big decisions. This past summer, my wife and I had a baby boy. His existence suggests that, at some point, I decided to become a father. Did I, though? I never practiced any prudential algebra; rather than drawing up lists of pros and cons and concluding, on balance, that having kids was a good idea, I gradually and unintentionally transitioned from not particularly wanting children to wanting them, and from wanting them to joining my wife in having them. If I made a decision, it wasn’t a very decisive one. In “ War and Peace ,” Tolstoy writes that, while an armchair general may imagine himself “analyzing some campaign on a map” and then issuing orders, a real general never finds himself at “the beginning of some event”; instead, he is perpetually situated in the middle of a series of events, each a link in an endless chain of causation. “Can it be that I allowed Napoleon to get as far as Moscow?” Tolstoy’s General Kutuzov wonders. “When was it decided? Was it yesterday, when I sent Platov the order to retreat, or was it the evening before, when I dozed off and told Bennigsen to give the orders? Or still earlier?” Unlike the capture of Moscow by Napoleon, the birth of my son was a joyous occasion. Still, like Kutuzov, I’m at a loss to explain it: it’s a momentous choice, but I can’t pinpoint the making of it in space or time.

For Tolstoy, the tendency of big decisions to make themselves was one of the great mysteries of existence. It suggested that the stories we tell about our lives are inadequate to their real complexity. Johnson means to offer a way out of the Tolstoyan conundrum. He wants to make us writers, rather than readers, of our own stories. Doing so requires engaging with one of life’s fundamental questions: Are we in charge of the ways we change?

Ideally, we’d be omniscient and clearheaded. In reality, we make decisions in imperfect conditions that prevent us from thinking things through. This, Johnson explains, is the problem of “bounded rationality.” Choices are constrained by earlier choices; facts go undiscovered, ignored, or misunderstood; decision-makers are compromised by groupthink and by their own fallible minds. The most complex decisions harbor “conflicting objectives” and “undiscovered options,” requiring us to predict future possibilities that can be grasped, confusingly, only at “varied levels of uncertainty.” (The likelihood of marital quarrelling must somehow be compared with that of producing a scientific masterwork.) And life’s truly consequential choices, Johnson says, “can’t be understood on a single scale.” Suppose you’re offered two jobs: one at Partners in Health, which brings medical care to the world’s neediest people, and the other at Goldman Sachs. You must consider which option would be most appealing today, later this year, and decades from now; which would be preferable emotionally, financially, and morally; and which is better for you, your family, and society. From this multidimensional matrix, a decision must emerge.

Professional deciders, Johnson reports, use decision processes to navigate this complexity. Many of the best processes unfold in stages—a divergence stage might precede a convergence stage—and are undertaken by groups. (Darwin might have divided his friends into two opposing teams, in the divergence stage, and then held a debate between them.) The decision might be turned into an iterative adventure. In a series of meetings known as a “design charrette”—the concept is borrowed from the field of product design—a large problem is divided into subproblems, each of which is assigned to a group; the groups then present their work to the whole team, receive feedback, regroup, and revise, in a cycle that loops until a decision has been made. (For architects in nineteenth-century Paris, working en charrette meant revising until the very last minute, even in the cart on the way to deliver a design to a panel of judges.) Charrettes are useful not just because they break up the work but because they force groups with different priorities and sensibilities—coders and designers, architects and real-estate developers—to interact, broadening the range of available viewpoints.

At firms like Royal Dutch Shell, where growth requires investing in expensive ventures, such as ports, wells, and pipelines, deciders use “scenario planning” to imagine how such investments might play out. (A scenario-planning starter kit, Johnson writes, contains three possible futures: “You build one model where things get better, one where they get worse, and one where they get weird.”) Military planners use immersive war games, carried out in the field or around a table, to bring more of the “decision map” into view. In such games, our enemies discover possibilities that we can’t foresee, ameliorating the poverty of our individual imaginations. And since the games can be played over and over, they allow decision-makers to “rewind the tape,” exploring many branches of the “decision tree.”

It would be strange to stage a war game about a prospective marriage. Still, Johnson writes, decision science has lessons for us as individuals. Late in “Farsighted,” he recounts his own use of decision-scientific strategies to persuade his wife to move, with their two children, from New York City to the Bay Area. Johnson starts with intuitions—redwoods are beautiful; the tech scene is cool—but quickly moves beyond them. He conducts a “full-spectrum analysis,” arriving at various conclusions about what moving might mean financially, psychologically (will moving to a new city make him feel younger?), and existentially (will he want to have been “the kind of person who lived in one place for most of his adult life”?). Johnson summarizes his findings in a PowerPoint deck, then shows it to his wife, who raises objections that he hasn’t foreseen (all her friends live in Brooklyn). Eventually, they make a contract. They’ll move, but if after two years she wants to return to New York they’ll do so, “no questions asked”—a rewind.

Seven years later, they’re happy with a bicoastal existence. Would Johnson have benefitted from “conducting a multidisciplinary charrette” to explore his family’s move? Probably not. Still, he writes, the principles of decision science—“seeking out diverse perspectives on the choice, challenging your assumptions, making an explicit effort to map the variables”—constituted “a step up” from the pro-and-con lists that Franklin and Darwin would have made. Looking back on his decision, Johnson can at least feel confident that he made one.

Johnson’s book is part of a long tradition. For centuries, philosophers have tried to understand how we make decisions and, by extension, what makes any given decision sound or unsound, rational or irrational. “Decision theory,” the destination on which they’ve converged, has tended to hold that sound decisions flow from values. Faced with a choice—should we major in economics or in art history?—we first ask ourselves what we value, then seek to maximize that value.

From this perspective, a decision is essentially a value-maximizing equation. If you’re going out and can’t decide whether to take an umbrella, you could come to a decision by following a formula that assigns weights to the probability of rain, the pleasure you’ll feel in strolling unencumbered, and the displeasure you’ll feel if you get wet. Most decisions are more complex than this, but the promise of decision theory is that there’s a formula for everything, from launching a raid in Abbottabad to digging an oil well in the North Sea. Plug in your values, and the right choice pops out.

In recent decades, some philosophers have grown dissatisfied with decision theory. They point out that it becomes less useful when we’re unsure what we care about, or when we anticipate that what we care about might shift. In a 2006 article called “ Big Decisions: Opting, Converting, Drifting ,” the late Israeli philosopher Edna Ullmann-Margalit asked us to imagine being one of “the early socialist Zionist pioneers” who, at the turn of the twentieth century, dreamed of moving from Europe to Palestine and becoming “the New Jews of their ideals.” Such a change, she observed, “alters one’s life project and inner core”; one might speak of an “Old Person” who existed beforehand, browsing bookshops in Budapest, and a “New Person” who exists afterward, working a field in the desert. The point of such a move isn’t to maximize one’s values. It’s to reconfigure them, rewriting the equations by which one is currently living one’s life.

Ullmann-Margalit doubted that such transformative choices could be evaluated as sound or unsound, rational or irrational. She tells the story of a man who “hesitated to have children because he did not want to become the ‘boring type’ ” that parents tend to become. “Finally, he did decide to have a child and, with time, he did adopt the boring characteristics of his parent friends—but he was happy!” Whose values were maximized—Old Person’s or New Person’s? Because no value-maximizing formula could capture such a choice, Ullmann-Margalit suggested that, rather than describing this man as having “decided” to have children, we say that he “opted” to have them—“opting” (in her usage) being what we do when we shift our values instead of maximizing them.

The nature of “opting situations,” she thought, explains why people “are in fact more casual and cavalier in the way they handle their big decisions than in the way they handle their ordinary decisions.” Yet it’s our unexplored options that haunt us. A decision-maker who buys a Subaru doesn’t dwell on the Toyota that might have been: the Toyota doesn’t represent a version of herself with different values. An opter, however, broods over “the person one did not marry, the country one did not emigrate to, the career one did not pursue,” seeing, in the “shadow presence” implied by the rejected option, “a yardstick” by which she might evaluate “the worth, success or meaning” of her actual life.

One might hope that a little research could bridge the divide between Old Person and New Person. In a 2013 paper titled “ What You Can’t Expect When You’re Expecting ,” L. A. Paul, a philosopher at Yale, writes, “Perhaps you think that you can know what it’s like to have a child, even though you’ve never had one, because you can read or listen to the testimony of what it was like for others. You are wrong.” Paul cites the philosopher David Lewis, who proposed what might be called the Vegemite Principle: if you’ve never tasted Vegemite, a mysterious and beloved Australian “food spread” made from brewer’s yeast, then neither a description of what it’s like (black, gooey, vegetal) nor experience with other spreads (peanut butter, marmalade, Nutella) will suffice to tell you whether you’d like it. Similarly, Paul argues, “being around other people’s children isn’t enough to learn about what it will be like in your own case.” She explains:

Babysitting for other children, having nieces and nephews or much younger siblings—all of these can be wonderful (or horrible) experiences, but they are different in kind from having a child of your very own, perhaps roughly analogous to the way an original artwork has aesthetic value partly because of its origins. . . . Experience with other people’s children might teach you about what it is like to hold a baby, to change diapers or hold a bottle, but not what it is like to create, carry, give birth to and raise a child of your very own .

Before having children, you may enjoy clubbing, skydiving, and LSD; you might find fulfillment in careerism, travel, cooking, or CrossFit; you may simply relish your freedom to do what you want. Having children will deprive you of these joys. And yet, as a parent, you may not miss them. You may actually prefer changing diapers, wrangling onesies, and watching “Frozen.” These activities may sound like torture to the childless version of yourself, but the parental version may find them illuminated by love, and so redeemed. You may end up becoming a different person—a parent. The problem is that you can’t really know, in advance, what “being a parent” is like. For Paul, there’s something thrilling about this quandary. Why should today’s values determine tomorrow’s? In her 2014 book, “Transformative Experience,” she suggests that living “authentically” requires occasionally leaving your old self behind “to create and discover a new self.” Part of being alive is awaiting the “revelation” of “who you’ll become.”

In the months before our son was born, our sense of our ignorance mounted. “We don’t know what we’re waiting for,” my wife said. We knew in advance when he would be born—an ultrasound had revealed that he was unusually big, and a C-section had been scheduled—but the morning of his arrival unfolded with a strange familiarity. I had coffee, toasted an English muffin, and read the news; I packed clothes for the hospital into the bag that I take to work every day. At eleven, my wife and I got into the car. Her mother and a family friend drove us. At the front entrance, we hugged them goodbye.

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“Good luck!” my mother-in-law said. “Your lives are about to change forever!”

“Thanks,” I said. “Where are you guys going?”

“Costco,” she said.

We walked inside. Upstairs, in a curtained-off nook, my wife settled into a hospital bed. For about an hour, we made small talk with the nurses, who guessed at the baby’s weight, and with the surgeon, who happened to be a college classmate of ours. (“ Heyyyyy! ” she said when she arrived.) Occasionally we were left to ourselves. We held hands and looked at each other.

Eventually, an aide helped my wife into a wheelchair. Flanked by two nurses and wearing oversized scrubs, I pushed her down a long hallway toward the operating room. Inside, the doctors were listening to “Stairway to Heaven” on the radio. In the midst of it all, I admired Jimmy Page’s guitar solo. Afterward, I sat in the same hallway holding our baby. I had wondered if, meeting him for the first time, I would feel transformed. I felt like the same old me. And yet none of the words I knew matched the experience I was having. With my hands, I felt him breathing. Quiet and still, warm and awake, he watched me with dark-blue eyes—an actual new person.

Agnes Callard, a philosopher at the University of Chicago, is skeptical about the idea of sudden transformation. She’s also convinced that, no matter how it looks or feels, we choose how we change. In her often moving, quietly profound book “ Aspiration: The Agency of Becoming ,” she writes that “becoming a parent is neither something that just happens to you nor something you decide to have happen to you.” Instead, Callard maintains, we “aspire” to self-transformation by trying on the values that we hope one day to possess, just as we might strike a pose in the mirror before heading out on a date. Of the man in Ullmann-Margalit’s article who feared becoming a boring dad, Callard writes, “By the time he says, ‘Let’s go for it,’ he is actively trying to appreciate the values distinctive of parenthood.” In place of a moment of decision, Callard sees a more gradual process: “Old Person aspires to become New Person.”

Suppose that you sign up for a classical-music-appreciation class, in which your first assignment is to listen to a symphony. You put on headphones, press Play—and fall asleep. The problem is that you don’t actually want to listen to classical music; you just want to want to. Aspiring, Callard thinks, is a common human activity: there are aspiring wine lovers, art appreciators, sports fans, fashionistas, d.j.s, executives, alpinists, do-gooders, parents, and religious believers, all hatching plans to value new things. Many ordinary decisions, moreover—such as choosing between Goldman Sachs and Partners in Health—also touch on the question of who we aspire to become.

Callard distinguishes between aspiration and ambition. Some of the people taking the music-appreciation class are ambitious; they enrolled not because they aspire to love classical music but because the class is an easy A. From the first day, they know what they value: their grades. (“Turning ambition into aspiration is one of the job descriptions of any teacher,” Callard notes.) The ambitious students find it easy to explain why they’re taking the class. But the aspirants must grow comfortable with a certain quantity of awkward pretense. If someone were to ask you why you enrolled, you would be overreaching if you said that you were moved by the profound beauty of classical music. The truth, which is harder to communicate, is that you have some vague sense of its value, which you hope that some future version of yourself might properly grasp.

Until aspirants can fully explain their motivations, they often understate their aims. An aspiring painter will say that she finds painting relaxing rather than try to explain what she hopes to express through her art. An aspiration, Callard concludes, has two faces: a near face, which represents it “as lesser than it is,” and a distant one, which an aspirant is reluctant to describe, because it “ennobles her current activity beyond its rightful status.”

Being a well-meaning phony is key to our self-transformations. “Consider what kind of thinking motivates a good student to force herself to listen to a symphony when she feels herself dozing off,” Callard writes:

She reminds herself that her grade and the teacher’s opinion of her depend on the essay she will write about this piece; or she promises herself a chocolate treat when she gets to the end; or she’s in a glass-walled listening room of the library, conscious of other students’ eyes on her; or perhaps she conjures up a romanticized image of her future, musical self, such as that of entering the warm light of a concert hall on a snowy evening.

These are “bad” reasons for listening to classical music, Callard says, but “ ‘bad’ reasons are how she moves herself forward, all the while seeing them as bad, which is to say, as placeholders for the ‘real’ reason.”

When we’re aspiring, inarticulateness isn’t a sign of unreasonableness or incapacity. In fact, the opposite may be true. “Everyone goes to college ‘to become educated,’ ” Callard observes, “but until I am educated I do not really know what an education is or why it is important.” If we couldn’t aspire to changes that we struggle to describe, we’d be trapped within the ideas that we already have. Our inability to explain our reasons is a measure of how far we wish to travel. It’s only after an aspirant has reached her destination, Callard writes, that “she will say, ‘This was why.’ ”

Because aspirations take a long time to come to fruition, they’re always at risk of interruption. Ullmann-Margalit’s 2006 paper makes mention of someone who opts “to leave the corporate world in order to become an artist.” Callard sees that sort of move as the result of an aspiration—a process that starts small, perhaps with a random stroll through an art museum, and culminates, years later, after one opens a pottery studio. The trouble is that some values preclude others. An aspiring artist must reject the corporate virtues to which he once aspired and embrace creative ones in their place. If a family illness forces him to abandon his artistic plans, he may end up adrift—disenchanted with corporate life, but unable to grasp the real satisfactions of an artistic existence. To aspire, Callard writes, is to judge one’s present-day self by the standards of a future self who doesn’t yet exist. But that can leave us like a spider plant putting down roots in the air, hoping for soil that may never arrive.

Callard revisits Paul’s “What You Can’t Expect When You’re Expecting.” In that paper, Paul explored a strange consequence of the Vegemite Principle: if there’s no rational way to decide to have a child—because you can’t know what you’ve never experienced—then there’s also no rational reason for being disappointed about not having one. (Such disappointment isn’t “wrong, or blameworthy, or subjectively unreasonable,” Paul notes—just nonrational.) Callard disagrees. She sees infertility as a form of interrupted aspiration. An aspiring mother who can’t have children is rational in feeling sad, she writes, and “this is so even if—indeed, it is true in part because—she cannot quite see what she would be missing.”

Before we had our son, I began exploring the “near face” of being a parent. I noticed how cute babies and children could be and pictured our spare room as a nursery; I envisaged my wife and I taking our child to the beach near our house (my version of “entering the warm light of a concert hall on a snowy evening”). I knew that these imaginings weren’t the real facts about having children—clearly, there was more to having kids than cuteness. All the same, I had no way of grasping the “distant face” of fatherhood. It was something I aspired to know.

As it turned out, my wife and I had trouble having children. It took us five years to navigate the infertility maze. For much of that time, we lived with what Callard describes as the “distinctive kind of sadness appropriate to losing something you were only starting to try to get to know.” This sadness, Callard points out, has a complement in the disappointment one might feel after “having to abandon one’s educational aspirations for motherhood”: “The aspiring college student who must give up those dreams to raise a child is liable to feel that she was counting on the college experience to make her life meaningful.” Callard quotes from “Barren in the Promised Land,” a book about infertility by the historian Elaine Tyler May. “The grief—the loss,” a woman tells May. “I spent six years of my life trying to be a mom, and it was beyond my control. For a while I couldn’t look ahead. I thought, how do I define myself if I don’t do this? What am I if not a parent?” It might be easier if our biggest transformations were instantaneous, because then we wouldn’t need to live in states of aspiration. Certain of who we were, we’d never get stuck between selves.

I read “Aspiration” last spring, before my son was born, and I talked about it often with my wife. We were especially struck by Callard’s argument that parenthood is intrinsically aspirational. Parents look forward to a loving relationship with a specific person. And yet that person doesn’t pop into existence fully formed; he emerges, in all his specificity, over many years. For this reason, it makes little sense to be an “ambitious parent”—someone who plans, in advance, what he will love about his child. It’s better to “enter parenthood for the most inchoate of reasons,” Callard concludes, since that “puts our children in a position to fill out what parenthood means for us”; in turn, parental love must “be capable of molding itself to the personality that is, itself, coming to take a determinate shape.”

For the most part, Callard’s book is a systematic overview, situated outside the moment. Still, she writes, for aspirants “what happens in the meanwhile is also life.” Now that our son is here, we live entirely in the meanwhile. We don’t want the present, or its mystery, to end. Each day is absorbing and endlessly significant. Recently, I watched my father’s face as he watched my son’s. Later, we listened as my son learned a new kind of laugh. Each time he looks at us, he sees us more in his own way. Like pages that turn themselves, the meaningful instants follow one another too soon. It’s hard to think of them as stepping stones on the way to anywhere else. ♦

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By Jill Lepore

By Zadie Smith

Essay Sample About Making Your Own Decisions

“The more decisions that you are forced to make alone, the more you are aware of your freedom to choose.” -Thornton Wilder. Making decisions comes with many bad things as well as many good things, but life without them would be insanely numb. In order to have a great life, making your own decisions is essential.

It is important to make your own decisions because it helps you follow your dreams. Barrington Irving grew up in poverty, crime, and more, but he followed his dreams and became the youngest person and African American to fly by himself around the world. According to National Geographic, “To follow his dream, Irving turned down a full football scholarship to the University of Florida. He washed airplanes to earn money for flight school and increased his flying skills by practicing at home on a $40 flight simulator game,” (266). If someone were to make that decision for him, he wouldn't have followed his dreams. Instead he was dedicated and stuck to being a pilot, he made his own decision. This quote supports my reason because Barrington Irving is a great example of following your dreams.

In addition to following your dreams, making your own decisions can help you to learn from the past while coming up with a better solution for the future. ALeeza Kazmi faces many issues regarding her race and her skin color. She had an incident regarding her skin color making a self portrait while she was younger. However, she got confused on how colors are assigned to people. So she went home and asked her parents, but she was young so she still didn't understand. Later in life she has another situation and responds very differently. Aleeza talks about how a boy asked her what race she was in her new school, and she told him that she's brown. Meanwhile he responds by saying that brown isn't a race. Aleeza was very livid by this response and screamed, “Who are you to tell me what I am? If im brown then im brown and deal with it, (ALeeza Kazmi). She finally found the words to express herself and her feelings. She overcame a huge problem not just in her life, but in the world as well. This quote relates to my reason because it talks about her coming up with a better solution in the future.

Making your own decisions helps you to be more independent and have more freedom. In the short argumentative story, “Three Cheers for the Nanny State,” it expresses the worries of not having any freedom because the government tries to ban large-sugary drinks. In addition to this, “ What people fear is that this is just the beginning: today it's soda, tomorrow it's the guy standing behind you making you eat your broccoli, floss your teeth, and watch PBS NewsHour everyday,” (Sarah Conly, 279). Being independent means making your own decisions and not having someone hold your hand every second of every day. This quote relates to my reason because if someone guides you everyday, you will never be independent.

Anyday, anywhere, anytime decisions will be knocking on your door. You can make good ones or bad ones, but that is just how life is. Life without decisions would be like millennials without their morning Iced coffee. Making decisions helps you to stick to your dreams, allows you to be more independent and have more freedom, as well as helps you overcome any problems by coming up with a better solution in the future.

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How to Make Great Decisions, Quickly

• Martin G. Moore

It’s a skill that will set you apart.

As a new leader, learning to make good decisions without hesitation and procrastination is a capability that can set you apart from your peers. While others vacillate on tricky choices, your team could be hitting deadlines and producing the type of results that deliver true value. That’s something that will get you — and them — noticed. Here are a few of a great decision:

• Great decisions are shaped by consideration of many different viewpoints. This doesn’t mean you should seek out everyone’s opinion. The right people with the relevant expertise need to clearly articulate their views to help you broaden your perspective and make the best choice.
• Great decisions are made as close as possible to the action. Remember that the most powerful people at your company are rarely on the ground doing the hands-on work. Seek input and guidance from team members who are closest to the action.
• Great decisions address the root cause, not just the symptoms. Although you may need to urgently address the symptoms, once this is done you should always develop a plan to fix the root cause, or else the problem is likely to repeat itself.
• Great decisions balance short-term and long-term value. Finding the right balance between short-term and long-term risks and considerations is key to unlocking true value.
• Great decisions are timely. If you consider all of the elements listed above, then it’s simply a matter of addressing each one with a heightened sense of urgency.

Where your work meets your life. See more from Ascend here .

Like many young leaders, early in my career, I thought a great decision was one that attracted widespread approval. When my colleagues smiled and nodded their collective heads, it reinforced (in my mind, at least) that I was an excellent decision maker.

• MM Martin G. Moore is the founder of Your CEO Mentor and author of No Bullsh!t Leadership and host of the No Bullsh!t Leadership podcast. His purpose is to improve the quality of leaders globally through practical, real world leadership content. For more information, please visit, www.martingmoore.com.

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Decision Making in Life

List of Essays

Personal decision making, defining our identities, charting life trajectories, embracing accountability, strategic planning, problem solving, risk management, the decision-making process.

• The Role of Emotional Intelligence in Decision Makingt

Self-Regulation

Social awareness, conflict resolution.

Life is a series of decisions, some small and seemingly inconsequential, others monumental and life-altering. Whether we're selecting a career path, choosing a life partner, or merely deciding on dinner, each choice shapes our life's trajectory. In this "decision making in life" essay, we'll delve into the importance of making informed decisions, understanding our identities, and the role of emotional intelligence in shaping our choices.

Every person stands at the crossroads of multiple decisions daily. The essence of personal decision-making lies in understanding who we are, what drives us, and what we value. When we possess this knowledge, we can align our choices with our intrinsic motivations, ensuring that our decisions are authentic and fulfilling.

Our identities are a fusion of our experiences, beliefs, values, and aspirations. Every decision we make, whether consciously or subconsciously, is rooted in these facets of our identity. Recognizing the core elements of our identity empowers us to make choices that resonate with our true selves, leading to a more fulfilled life.

The decisions we make are like waypoints on a map, guiding us on our life's journey. With each choice, we determine our direction, sometimes altering our path dramatically or subtly refining our route. By making informed, deliberate choices, we can ensure that our trajectory aligns with our goals and aspirations.

Decision-making is an act of responsibility. Recognizing the importance of decision-making in life means accepting that our choices have consequences. Embracing this accountability can empower us to make more informed, thoughtful decisions, considering not only immediate implications but long-term effects as well.

Strategic planning involves looking ahead, setting goals, and determining the best course of action to achieve those objectives. By employing strategic thinking in our personal lives, we can anticipate potential challenges, optimize opportunities, and navigate the intricate maze of life with foresight and purpose.

Every decision stems from a desire to solve a problem or seize an opportunity. Effective problem-solving skills enable us to dissect issues, identify potential solutions, and select the optimal course of action.

Life is unpredictable. While we can't foresee every outcome, we can manage potential risks. Assessing the pros and cons of a decision and anticipating potential pitfalls is essential. Risk management doesn't mean avoiding risks but making informed decisions, understanding potential outcomes, and being prepared for them.

Making a decision is a systematic process, and understanding its stages can help us make more informed choices.

• Identifying the Problem or Opportunity : Recognize the need for a decision. Is there a problem to solve or an opportunity to exploit?
• Gathering Information : Equip yourself with relevant facts, data, and insights. The better informed you are, the clearer your perspective will be.
• Evaluating Options : Weigh the pros and cons of each potential decision. Consider the implications of each choice and how they align with your values and goals.
• Making the Decision : After thorough evaluation, choose the best course of action.
• Reflecting and Learning : After a decision is made, assess the outcome. Were the results as expected? What lessons can be drawn for future decisions?

The Role of Emotional Intelligence in Decision Making

Emotional intelligence (EI) plays a pivotal role in shaping our decisions. Possessing a high EI means understanding and managing our emotions and recognizing those of others, facilitating better interpersonal interactions and informed personal decisions.

Individuals with a high EI can regulate their emotions, preventing them from making impulsive decisions. This self-regulation ensures that choices are based on logic and reason rather than fleeting emotions.

Understanding others' emotions and perspectives aids in making decisions that consider broader implications, especially when multiple parties are involved.

When faced with conflicting views or choices, those with high EI can navigate the situation, find common ground, and arrive at mutually beneficial decisions.

The "importance of decision making in life essay" cannot be understated, for it offers a window into the intricate web of choices that shape our existence. Through this essay on the importance of decision making, we comprehend the pivotal role these choices play in defining who we are and the paths we tread. The "importance of decision making in our life essay" lies not just in highlighting the weight of every choice, but in emphasizing the need for introspection, foresight, and emotional intelligence. To truly grasp the essence of this "essay on importance of decision making in life," one must reflect on one’s own life choices and their ramifications. For, as we come to understand the importance of decision making in our life essay, we learn to appreciate the delicate balance of logic, emotion, strategy, and instinct that drives each decision, large or small.

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I Have the Right to Make My Own Decisions

Why People Should Make Their Own Decisions

In my last blog entry I gave my view that the purpose of government is:

We need government because it is in everybody’s best interest to have an institution that handles the situations where having everybody acting in their own best interest doesn’t work.

I then said I would use this next to discuss the role of government.  I decided now though that we need another step first.  The core assumption here is that by default it is better for people to make decisions for themselves instead of government making decisions for them.   This contrasts with Plato’s assumption in his republic that people are not capable of making their own decisions and require elite “philosopher-kings” to make decisions for them.  There are two three reasons why I think it is better for people to make their own decisions:

• There are just too many decisions to be made for a few people to make these decisions well.  Millions of people make countless decisions.  Even if the elite are all extremely intelligent, superbly trained, and totally beneficent, they just don’t have the time to thoroughly understand and wisely decide every issue.  When conditions change, the experts most likely won’t be there to access the situation and determine what needs to be done.
• Decisions tend to be better if the person making the decision is better off when the decision is good and worse off when the decision is bad.  If the decision maker is unaffected by the decision or only partially affected, the decision is most likely to be poor.  For example, if a bureaucrat turns down a health insurance claim to save money, he doesn’t suffer if the person dies as a result.
• I believe in freedom.  We have the right to make the decisions that affect our own lives as long as we respect the same rights of other people to lead their own lives.  We may not always make good decisions.  We frequently don’t.  We should be able to make them for ourselves.

With this assumption better explained, I will in the next blog talk about the role of government.  Really I will.  I promise.

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Decision Making Essay

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Introduction

Decision-making is undoubtedly a fundamental practice the management of corporations. It denotes the progression of choosing and executing options, which are in tandem with an aspiration. It also connotes a string of actions commencing with a broad objective, trickling down to generating, appraising, choosing and executing favourable options.

Decisions made in organizations may have in-depth upshots on the firm and its employees. Such judgements in organizations are distinctive in terms of the risks involved, reservations managers have on them, their importance and contribution to the attainment of the firm’s broader objectives.

Some are tricky and requires insight thought, and may include setting of new policies, reorienting firm’s purposes and objectives, and large-scale ventures with a potential to impact on the economy of the firm. On the other hand, routine decisions also form part of a firm (Martin & Fellenz 2010, p. 227).

Rational model is a conventional representation of making decisions, and it leans on realistic financial hypothesis where the concerned members think of what constitutes best way of arriving at a judgement. Managements regularly use this model to make fiscally sensible decisions, which are capable of contributing to organization’s financial growth.

The model helps delineate how managers should make decisions. In addition, it presents guidelines, which enable decision maker to reach a favourable panacea for organizational development. The mould also negates the decision makers from applying their personal interests while searching for favourable outcomes.

It is highly applicable on decisions characterised by assurances and possibilities since suitable information is accessible. Furthermore, the model exposes opportunities to computations. For instance, usage of Information Technology to automate programmed decisions such as airline companies apply it is seat bookings, flight routes, and services pricing.

It is worth noting that decision-making techniques relying on quantitative information benefit processed in computers enable the model to gain usage. The model; however, has assumptions including decision makers’ ability to fulfil goals already agreed on and setbacks critically prepared and definite.

The decision makers also aim to attain certainty and collect relevant data, options and prospective outcomes computed. Procedure for evaluating options is clear and those able to optimize fiscal returns chosen. Finally, it assumes that the decision maker is logical and can use judgment to choose options, which will optimize economic gains.

The model describes the six stages of decision making as identifying a dilemma or opportunity. Daft and Marcic note that organizations face problems when they underperform and opportunities when administrators realize potentials of improving performance past existing echelon. This becomes the initial step in decision-making and warrants company’s inner and external forces surveillance (Daft & Marcic 2010, p. 188).

The managers utilize internal fiscal reports to forecast on possible threats and openings. Information gathering is another crucial stage that follows. This normally guarantees the manager an opportunity to analyze the possible causes of problems identified. This is tenable when decision makers, through creativity, develop questions reading the problem and opportunity state (Griffin, & Moorhead 2010, p. 198)

. The third stage is to develop alternatives, which seeks to generate potential optional answers to react to the requirements of the condition and give feedback on the basic reasons. It is easy to discover realistic options within the firm’s regulations since the decision-making is based on certainties and threats.

The identified options are deemed to ease the disparities regarding current state of affairs against conditions considered necessary.

Selection of desired options becomes the fourth step, which seeks to select among the options, the most realistic alternative that can best respond to the firms broad objectives. It is imperative to assert that the best attainable option must be requiring minimal resources to attain the needed outcomes. Furthermore, decision maker selects an option with the lowest quantity of uncertainties and threats.

This would aid in avoiding errors in the process. The fifth step is implementing the selected option, which requires corporation from the organization’s stakeholders. The managers, administrators and other staff work together to implement the option.

The ultimate step is to evaluate and present feedback on the status of implementation. Decision makers collect data on the effectiveness of the option in responding to the objectives. This final step is important since decision-making is an uninterrupted cycle. Therefore, the provision of feedback forms the benchmark for future decision-making.

There are factors, which influence decision-making course thus leading to a deviation from the rational form discussed above. Individuality personality and values is one of the leading parameter that affects the process. Different attributes of people manipulate decision-making choices. It is normal to discover that various individuals become nervous, worried, and agitated while in the crucial stages of decision-making.

Such attributes normally leads to fallacious interpretation in the process. It is crucial to declare that being nervous compromises reasoning; therefore, a manager may fail to arrive at the best decision. The attitudinal traits also interfere with decision in an organization. Some managers have fixed thoughts concerning what happens at the organization.

They believe that specific employees or figures must be present whenever there is a crucial matter to make decision. This implies that they have preset minds that such individuals are the best decision makers. This normally prompts the organization to believe such people contribute, regardless of the impacts they present on the organization.

Various managers possess different personalities. Some possess elevated self-esteem, which is motivational in during decision-making. Managers with strong personalities normally dominate the discussion during the process. This may flaw the process since their juniors may fear to contribute. This offers fewer options on the best way of solving organizational problems. This is incoherent with the rational model.

Preconceived fears about the consequences of the decisions would have on the organization normally send chills in the managers, and other concerned parties. This refers to emotional attributes of an individual. Griffin and Moorhead outline that perceived impacts, as well as post resolution effects may impair decision-making.

Furthermore, cognitive ideals such as outright biases have an effect on decision-making (Griffin, & Moorhead 2010, p. 202). Values that an individual embrace also influence decision making, and many counter the rational model. It is factual that managers espouse divergent principles and would attempt to maintain them in every situation. People would always propose what they like regardless of what impact it has on others.

Group relationship is another important parameter that influences decision making to a greater deal. The success of making decisions in groups is subject to the extent of understanding among members forming the team. Martin and Fellenz, posit that the group must have the right intensity of diversity thus enabling them to iron their differences.

Group decision making is highly applicable in organizations where it intricate issues, which can only be managed by a team with varied knowledge backgrounds (Martin & Fellenz 2010, p. 284). Group polarization connotes the way people react to situations of decision-making. People normally arrive at decision-making meetings with different views; however, they tone down to borrow the ideas of their fellows.

Therefore, a group that comprises of people with deep understanding of the dynamics that exists normally makes rational decision. Nonetheless, some groups might not arrive at a decision easily owing to the divergent notions members possess. This may be due to the everlasting differences that exist amongst members.

The level and kind of relationship within a group normally dictates how people make decisions. Superior relationship may prompt others to seek support from their fellows; however, this may flaw the process thus leading to irrationality. Group decision-making in organizations enable extra people to sustain influential contributions during the process than they would achieve individually.

Another issue is group thinking, which happens a when a decision making team is greatly involved in a discussion and the motivation to evaluate options is cancel out by their unanimity. This fails to support the rational model of decision-making since it thwarts other possible options that are crucial in the process.

Rational model upholds that divergent group may arrive at better conclusion than a group that has similar interest. Therefore, a divergent group, where people have good relation, but varied interest, would offer beat avenue of exploring many options.

The peak management makes tactical decisions within the organization. Varied aspects of power and its availability in any firm, coupled with inter personality conditions give rise to the relationships (Venkatachalam & Sellappan 2011, p. 97). Managers can influence decision making as they comment on what qualifies for discussions.

Power relations contribute to decision making through the engagement of organization staff on involvement in undertaking activities. Managers merely comply with the already set standards while leading other people. Whenever this takes place, the managers hold discussions with the relevant people to make decisions collectively on work aimed at meeting company goals (Venkatachalam & Sellappan 2011, p. 97).

Power leads to conflict in the organization, which needs adequate deliberation to decide on the best move. Different echelons of power requires transmitting information from pinnacle to bottom, which may cause damaged communication due to structural circumstances of those involved. Decisions making is necessary to solve the predicaments resulting from such conflicts.

Furthermore, power denotes leadership, which requires excellent qualities including superior decision-making ability. Managers must be able to identify threats and solutions to problems when options, facts, and goals are unclear. Managers ought to encourage shared decision-making. This is a way of empowering subordinates to be able to take part in an advice-giving decision making processes.

Power ought to organize the team members involved in decisions making. However, managers sometimes misuse their powers while engaging employees on making decisions about certain issues.

Decision choice less is the situation of managers seeking the opinion of the junior employees on vital organizational development agendas. The employees provide their information, which the manager discards and cannot include as one of the options for improving conditions in the organization (Shapira 2002, p. 145)

Political behaviour refers to as actions displayed by people in organizations; moreover, it depicts the requirements in such organizations. Political issues among some decision makers are an important aspect of decision-making. The politics include how managers use power to influence decision-making or the behaviour of employees while agitating for better remunerations.

It concentrates on designing and utilizing power in firm to ensure people who lack power get it to organizational level. The impact of political behaviour on managers includes the possibility of drawing up new policies for an organization upon learning the prevailing political happenings (Robbins, Judge, Odendaal & Roodt 2009, p. 358).

The managers take advantage of political unrest in an organization to destroy critical documents, which might be relevant for decision-making. People view political behaviour as a way of democratic decision-making, communicating demands for performance.

However, political behaviour in firms also presents dark side including intentionally telling lies, and intimidation. Political behaviours within an organization may thus impair decision following the divides it creates. Every political move has adverse impact in the process thus thwarting the rational model.

In conclusion, decision-making refer to a progression of choosing and executing options that are consistent with one’s inspirations. Rational model has contributed immensely to the decision-making in various organizations since it tend to eliminate all external forces that may hinder the course.

It is notable that myriads of parameters may influence the process. Personage personality and values normally may affect decision within the organization. Some managers hold particular values that they may not sacrifice in the process of decision-making. Self-esteem and other emotional attributes also affect decision. Anger, aggression and being overjoyed may compromise reasoning since they interfere with the psychology.

Making decision under such pressures may hinder the process, but soberness may lead to appropriate decision-making. Group relationship is another parameter that hinders decision since it influences individual thinking. Power relationship in an organization influences decision, as employees view high cadre to dominate during the process. This would allow them to offer options and easily convince people to consider their ideas.

The politics within corporations normally hinders decision-making, as it may lead to intergroup formations with competing attitudes. Decision-making should thus occur in a rational setting, which allows for adequate and rational consideration of every option.

List of references

Daft, R. & Marcic, D. (2010) Understanding Management , 7 th Ed. Ohio, OH. Cengage Learning.

Griffin, R. & Moorhead, G. (2010) Organizational Behavior: Managing People and Organizations, 9 th Ed. Ohio OH. Cengage Learning.

Martin, J. & Fellenz, M. (2010) Organizational Behaviour & Management . Ohio, OH. Cengage Learning.

Robbins, P. Judge, T. Odendaal, A. & Roodt, G. (2009) Organizational Behaviour: Global and Southern African Perspectives , 2 nd Ed. Cape Town.Pearson South Africa.

Shapira, Z. (2002) Organizational Decision Making . New York, NY. Cambridge University Press.

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Before You Make Any Decision, Ask Yourself This One Thing

Emily mae mentock, february 27, 2024, january 10, 2018.

In your 20s, you face some of the biggest forks in the road of your entire life. Take the new job or stay where you are? Get married or move in together? Have kids or wait until college loans are paid off?Twenty years from now, you will likely look back on these decisions as some of the most significant turning points in your life.How will you know the right thing to do?“Do what makes you happy!” or “Take the job that makes more money,” or even “Do the opposite of what society is telling you,” might be the advice we hear from people in our lives. But do these questions help us make the best decisions?Many of us have been dreaming about our adulthood goals for a long time. But now that you are in a position to make choices that will help you achieve those ambitions (or keep you from achieving them), it is time to form a clear picture of what achieving your dreams really looks like.

What is your ultimate goal?

This is the most important thing to consider.“You can’t realize your goal if it’s not defined. It sounds so simple but it’s true,” Jeff Weiner , CEO of LinkedIn, stated in an interview with the New York Times .To identify your ultimate aspiration, you must ask yourself what is most important to you? What do you want to be known for in 20–30 years? Turning your thoughts inward ( What do I want to accomplish with my work? ) is going to set you up for lasting success in a way that external evaluation ( Which job will bring me more popularity? ) cannot.“People who aren’t self-reflective are going to end up making bad decisions because they don’t really know what they want in the first place,” David Welch, PhD explains in his book Decisions, Decisions .In order to become an effective decision maker, consider an ultimate goal for any area of your life. Here is an example of mine: I hope to be remembered by my work forming an online community committed to certain values, and to be remembered as a positive example of someone who lives out those values as a leader, wife, and mother. Once you have your ambition in mind (or perhaps written in a place that you will see it often), you have a vantage point for all decisions that will come up along the journey of working toward that goal.

All decisions must point toward this ultimate goal

“Decisions are important. They reflect who you are as a person,” explains Dr. Joe Arvai in his TED Talk .With each major decision that you face in life, you are also presented with an opportunity to pursue and manifest your aspirations. Now, every decision, from what to eat for breakfast to what career to pursue to balancing work and life, has been assigned a more meaningful consequence that invites you to choose more intentionally.Sonja Lyubomirsky explains in her book The Myths of Happiness , “Goal pursuit in and of itself imparts structure and meaning to our daily lives, creating obligations, deadlines, and timetables, as well as opportunities for mastering new skills and for interacting with others. Hence, in the course of our pursuits we may attain a sense of purpose in our lives, feelings of efficacy over our progress, and mastery over our time.”There’s good news, too, as Lyubomirsky adds: “All of these things make people happy.”

Don’t forget about values

If all our decisions will point us toward a goal, our values will help guide us in how we live out those decisions .For example, I value honesty. When I make a decision to go for a promotion (working toward my goal of a successful career), I know that I will work honestly. I will not value the promotion over the integrity of my work, and, as a result, I will be happier and more satisfied in the pursuit of my goal.“Seeing our work as an expression of cherished values and as a way to make a contribution is the foundation of well-being, happiness, and our ongoing success,” Annie McKee writes in her book How to Be Happy at Work .When you combine goal-oriented decision-making with value-based action, you set yourself up for life-long fulfillment.

Make it your own

When faced with an especially challenging decision, you may be inclined to consult others as to the best way to pursue your goal.Seeking the perspectives of others (a.k.a. advice) is good — but empower yourself to make your own decisions. “If you look to external sources for validation, you’re more likely to make unhealthy decisions. It blinds you from seeing your own strengths, blocking you from reaching your full potential,” Amanda Wetzstein Frey tells Verily Magazine .After you make the decision, embrace it as your own. If it turns out well, be proud of yourself. If not, value this as an opportunity to learn.Taking ownership of your decision-making will set you up for success when it comes time to evaluate your progress toward your ultimate goal. Whether your choice turned out the way you wanted it to or not, having a clear understanding of why you made the decision will help you learn from it — so you can avoid or lean toward similar decisions at future forks in the road.“You are defined by the decisions that you make. The decisions that you make project the values that you hold to the world around you,” says Arvai.So before you make another decision, determine your ultimate goal and core values — and you’ll know exactly which way to go when navigating those forks in the road.

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Decision-Making

Parenting: decision making, help your children become good decision makers..

Posted October 19, 2009 | Reviewed by Ekua Hagan

Decision making is one of the most important skills your children need to develop to become healthy and mature adults. Decision making is crucial because the decisions your children make dictate the path that their lives take.

Teaching your children to make their own decisions has several benefits. When they make a good decision, they can gain the greatest amount of satisfaction and fulfillment because they chose it. When your children make bad decisions, they may suffer for it, but they can learn from the experience and make better decisions in the future.

Popular culture wants to take your children's decisions out of their hands—and yours—and make your children's decisions for them. Popular culture short-circuits your children's decision making by pushing their "hot buttons" related to peer acceptance, physical attractiveness , and stimulation. When these hot buttons are pushed, children who are poor decision makers are ready prey to the inevitable bad decisions when they listen to popular culture.

Making Bad Decisions

Whenever I speak to a group of young people, I ask how many of them have ever done anything stupid in their lives. With complete unanimity and considerable enthusiasm, they all raise their hands. When I then ask how many of them will ever do anything stupid in the future, the response is equally fervent. I also ask children why they do stupid things. Their responses include:

• I didn't stop to think.
• It seemed like fun at the time.
• I was bored .
• Peer pressure .
• I didn't consider the consequences.
• To get back at my parents.

The fact is, it's part of your children's "job" to do stupid things. Bad decision making is an essential part of their road to maturity. A problem arises, however, if their poor decision making continues. This usually occurs when parents don't hold them responsible for their poor decisions, instead, bailing them out of the trouble their children get into. These children learn that they aren't responsible for their decisions and can continue to do stupid things without fear of consequences.

Raise Good Decision Makers

Encouraging your children to make their own decisions isn't as simple as saying, "You make the decision. You're on your own." Instead, ceding decision making to your children is an incremental process based on their age and maturity. It would be downright dangerous to give children complete latitude in their decision making. But you can begin to teach decision-making skills in small doses even with very young children.

For example, you wouldn't tell your children they can have any treat they want in a convenience store. They would be overwhelmed with the choices and paralyzed with indecision, or they would want everything in the store. What you would do is give them a choice among jawbreakers, licorice, and bubble gum (or, better yet, sesame sticks, fruit wraps, and yogurt peanuts) and they would then decide which treat they want.

As your children get older, you can expand the number of choices you give them. You can also increase the importance of the decisions they make—for example, what activities they participate in or when they choose to go to bed. With each decision, you want them to recognize whether their decisions were good or bad and that they're responsible for the consequences of their decisions. By making this connection, they can see that their decisions are their own. Of course, you should retain veto power when needed, but it should be used judiciously.

The Process of Good Decision Making

A part of helping your children gain experience with making decisions involves educating them about the decision making process. Good decision making is complex and takes years of experience to master (no one ever really perfects it; even adults do stupid things occasionally).

Because children lack experience and perspective, they tend to make decisions that are impulsive and focused on immediate gratification. The first step is simply to teach them to stop before they leap. With just a few seconds of hesitation, your children can prevent a lot of bad decisions.

Of course, getting children to stop before jumping would require them to think, which is usually not part of their repertoire. You can help your children by "catching them in the act," meaning when you see them about to jump without thinking, stop them. Also, because you can't always be looking over their shoulder, you can use times when they do leap without thinking (and things don't turn out so well) to ask them how they could have made a different choice in hindsight.

You can then teach your children to ask themselves several key questions. First, "Why do I want to do this?" You want your children to understand what motivates their decisions. The children I speak to usually know why they make decisions, at least after the deed is done, and they almost always know what the right (and wrong) decision is.

One problem is that children are often faced with conflicting motivations. They may know that doing something is stupid, but they may feel peer pressure to do it anyway. Only a well-learned sense of what's right and wrong and clear consequences can prevent your children from going to the "dark side" of decision making too often.

The next question is: "What are my options?" Children often have several possible choices when confronted with a decision. For example, when faced with the possibility of stealing candy from a store with friends, children could a) take the candy, b) not take the candy but ignore the fact that their friends are stealing, or c) try to convince their friends that stealing is wrong. Knowing their options can help your children see clearly what their decisions might be and also will make it easier for them to connect their decisions with what is right.

Then your children need to ask, "What are the consequences of my actions?" (or in their language, "How much trouble will I get into?"). They need to judge the risks and rewards of their decisions in the short run and the long term. The challenge here is that children often underestimate the costs and overestimate the benefits of their decisions. If you set high expectations and enforce tough consequences with them, they may think twice before acting foolishly.

Lastly, perhaps the most important question children need to ask themselves is: "Is this decision in my best interests?" Understanding what is best in both the short and long term, having these concerns outweigh competing interests from popular culture and peer pressure, and making a decision based on their best interests is the culmination of the decision making process.

Coach Good Decision Making

You can help your children learn good decision making by coaching them through decisions. This guidance allows them to see how a decision is thought through and arrived at. During these discussions, you can help your children identify key contributors to the decision and take thoughtful steps to the decision. After the decision, you can help them judge how good the decision was and, if the decision turned out to be a poor one, why it was a bad decision and what they can learn from it.

You can also present your children with hypothetical moral dilemmas, such as what to do when friends are teasing another child, that they are likely to face and engage them in a conversation about how they would make a decision. Of course, children won't always make such deliberate decisions, particularly when they're young, but if you coach them and give them experience with good decision making, they'll use it more as they gain maturity.

Finally, part of your children learning to make good decisions is allowing them to make poor ones. If handled properly, bad decisions can play a powerful role in your children becoming good decision makers. Yes, they should be held accountable for their decisions by providing them with consequences that are commensurate with their offenses. But children must also be required to explore their decisions, understand why they made a poor decision, and ensure that they "get it" so that they don't make the same bad decision again.

Jim Taylor, Ph.D. , teaches at the University of San Francisco.

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Romeo And Juliet: Making Your Own Decisions Essay

Being an introverted type of person, I thought being friends with her was for the better. It all seem to click when we met in kindergarten. We thought we were going to be lifelong best friends. Over the years of elementary school, we spent more and more time together and kept growing closer as friends. It was all fun and great until I let her take control of many of my decisions. She would speak for the both of us and do things | didn’t agree with, but I would simply brush it off and continue to follow along. I was giving up my lead role to please my lifelong best friend.

It all began in fifth grade when a lot of my life changed and people were coming and going. One of my old best friends moved away, but I wanted to become friends with her old friend, Claire. My lifelong best friend, Juliet, didn’t exactly like that idea though. Juliet wanted to take over for the both of us and didn’t want to try becoming friends with Claire. We were only starting to get to know Claire and spent a fair amount of time with her when Juliet decided to take this idea to action. I remember that day vividly.

It was a cool, cloudy day and we were all out at recess when Juliet asked me if I wanted her to tell our “new” friend, Claire, that I hated her. I was shocked at how she came up with such a mean idea and I didn’t understand why she asked me if I wanted to do that in the first place. I didn’t hate Claire, I was only trying to become friends with her. My response to Juliet wasn’t a clear no or yes. Juliet then decided to make the hard decision for me and told Claire that I hated her. When Claire hear the supposed truth, her heart broke. Slowly a small stream of tears glides down her cheek that gradually turn into a running waterfall.

Her eyes told a story of a newly broken heart. This whole time she thought I was trying to become friends with her, but now it looked as if I was using her. When | caught a glimpse of Claire’s reaction to the three bitter words, I became upset with myself. I knew I should’ve spoken up and tried to do something to stop Juliet, but I didn’t want to hurt our friendship. By not saying anything, I hurt more people than 1 intended to. After getting a small and firm discipline talk from the teacher, Juliet was telling me how she felt as if she didn’t do anything wrong.

My feeling of upset grew to an awkward sick feeling that made my stomach turn. I felt uncomfortable with this idea that we “didn’t do anything wrong”. For the rest of the day, I was able to easily distract myself from the issue with everyday life on its own, but that sick and uncomfortable feeling didn’t simply slip away. After the big fifth grade drama, life kept going downhill. In middle school, following Juliet didn’t get any better. The problem I had with Claire only expanded and Juliet would randomly say some mean comments to Claire such as, “Why do you always follow us around? Maybe we don’t like hanging out with you! Every time Juliet would drop a mean comment, I would stand there just as shocked, but a little less hurt than Claire was. I let Juliet talk for the both of us, even though I didn’t agree with the many things she was saying. When Claire wasn’t around, Juliet would talk about her badly. She’d describe how weird, needy, and pathetic Claire was. This whole time as I watched this happen, I kept being quiet, introverted, and following the crowd. Everything that happened during that time in my life was like me being on a leash following my owner. I didn’t take lead in what I wanted or believed.

All I wanted to keep the friendship Juliet and I had. With every new issue that came up in life I would follow Juliet’s ways and ideas. Some people who knew the real me, asked me why I was friends with Juliet. I know some people asked because they didn’t like Juliet, but a few asked why because they could tell I wasn’t being myself. Each time I did something that Juliet would of done, the awkward sick feeling I got from the drama with Claire would stir up in my stomach again. With each step| took in Juliet’s footsteps, there was a feeling that this isn’t what | was supposed to be a part of.

This feeling that kept sticking with me was like when you try to fit two of the wrong puzzle pieces together. Once those two wrong puzzle pieces are together, they get stuck and it seems that the only way to get them apart is to break one or the other. Every time I was asked why with good or bad intentions, I would feel this sharp pain in my stomach like I just got stabbed. It felt as if a little piece of my heart cracked because I knew this friendship wasn’t right for me. In those moments, I easily wanted to drop the topic because it’s difficult to know what to do.

All these great people are telling me Juliet isn’t the world greatest friend, but she is the only best friend I’ve truly ever had. Our friendship has been so close and we have had so many fun, crazy memories since the beginning. It’s not something that I can easily let go because after I don’t know where to go or what to do. After someone foundation is taking away, where does one go after that? After a long year of many reminders and warning signs, I finally was able to open up my eyes and see what I was taking part in. I could see that | wasn’t making my own decisions like I should be, or standing up for others and myself.

My mind then clicked and I was able to take a step out of my shoes and see what the other people were seeing. With better understanding, I decided that I should start creating my own unique path filled with ideas and things that | find important. This change started to happen when I began surrounding myself with positive, inspiring people that had many similar beliefs and morals I did. Through this positive environment, I was able to discover who I really am. I was slowly undercovering my full potential and I was cracking out of my introverted shell.

I realized I am a leader and if I was going to lead other people, I needed to take lead of myself. Bit by bit the puzzle pieces were starting to pull apart. As I was discovering a part of my true identity, Juliet also started to show her true colors. She started to take her ideas and morals to the extreme and start to do the activities she only talked about. She did activities I didn’t agree with, such as finding a Romeo, skipping assemblies, and finding enjoyment in very suspicious things in her free time. She showed she didn’t care for ideas and morals | clearly cared for.

Stepping up and taking the lead of my life has taken a lot of small steps, but I finally recognized what I needed to do. I needed to make my own choices and control what I can because it’s my life. I shouldn’t give up my right to make my own decisions to keep a friendship that hurts me. Life will hit me hard at times, but I need to control what I can and try to make the best of it. We all have the ability to make our own choices and do what we believe is right. Don’t give that right up to follow the crowd or someone especially when it hurts you. Life will be full of decisions big or small, but make everyone yours and not someone else’s.

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How Good Is Your Decision Making?

Be ready for your next big decision.

By the Mind Tools Content Team

Decision-making is a key skill in the workplace, and is particularly important if you want to be an effective leader.

Whether you're deciding which person to hire, which supplier to use, or which strategy to pursue, the ability to make a good decision with available information is vital.

It would be easy if there were one formula you could use in any situation, but there isn't. Each decision presents its own challenges.

So, how do you avoid making bad decisions – or leaving decisions to chance? You need a systematic approach to decision making so that, no matter what type of decision you have to make, you can make it with confidence.

No one can afford to make poor decisions. That's why we've developed this short quiz to help you assess your current decision-making skills. We'll examine how well you structure your decision-making process, and then we'll point you to specific tools and resources you can use to develop and improve this important competency.

How Good Are Your Decision-Making Skills?

Instructions.

For each statement, click the button in the column that best describes you. Please answer questions as you actually are (rather than how you think you should be), and don't worry if some questions seem to score in the "wrong direction." When you are finished, please click the "Calculate My Total" button at the bottom of the test.

As you answered the questions, did you see some common themes? We based our quiz on the essential steps that we highlight in our article, How to Make Decisions . Once you're sure of the root issue that you're deciding on, the strategy to follow is:

• Establish a positive decision-making environment.
• Generate potential solutions.
• Evaluate the solutions
• Check your decision.
• Communicate and implement.

If you're aware of these basic elements and improve the way you structure them, this will help you develop a better overall decision-making system. Let's look at these elements individually.

Establish a positive decision-making environment (Questions 3, 7, 13, 16)

If you've ever been in a meeting where people seem to be discussing different issues, then you've seen what happens when the decision-making environment hasn't been established. It's so important for everyone to understand the issue before preparing to make a decision. This includes agreeing on an objective, making sure the right issue is being discussed, and agreeing on a process to move the decision forward.

You also must address key interpersonal considerations at the very beginning. Have you included all the stakeholders ? And do the people involved in the decision agree to respect one another and engage in an open and honest discussion ? After all, if only the strongest opinions are heard, you risk not considering some of the best solutions available.

Generate potential solutions

(Questions 4, 8, 11)

Another important part of a good decision process is generating as many good alternatives as sensibly possible to consider. If you simply adopt the first solution you encounter, then you're probably missing a great many even better alternatives. Our Creativity Tools page has a comprehensive set of tools and techniques that can help you generate great ideas, including Brainstorming .

Evaluate the solutions (Questions 1, 6, 15)

The stage of exploring alternatives is often the most time-consuming part of the decision-making process. This stage sometimes takes so long that a decision is never made! To make this step efficient, be clear about the factors you want to include in your analysis. There are three key factors to consider:

Risk – Most decisions involve some risk. However, you need to uncover and understand the risks to make the best choice possible.

Consequences – You can't predict the implications of a decision with 100 percent accuracy. But you can conduct an Impact Analysis to identify and evaluate possible consequences.

Feasibility – Is the choice realistic and implementable? This factor is often ignored. You usually have to consider certain constraints when making a decision. As part of this evaluation stage , ensure that the alternative you've selected is significantly better than the status quo.

Decide (Questions 5, 10, 17)

Making the decision itself can be exciting and stressful. To help you deal with these emotions as objectively as possible, use a structured approach to the decision. This means taking a look at what's most important in a good decision. Take the time to think ahead and determine exactly what will make the decision "right." This will significantly improve your decision accuracy. Decision Matrix Analysis and Paired Comparison Analysis are effective tools for doing this.

Check Your Decision (Questions 2, 9)

Remember that some things about a decision are not objective. The decision has to make sense on an intuitive, instinctive level as well. The entire process we have discussed so far has been based on the perspectives and experiences of all the people involved. Now it's time to check the alternative you've chosen for validity and "making sense."

If the decision is a significant one, it's also worth auditing it to make sure that your assumptions are correct, and our article, The Ladder of Inference , can help you to ensure that the logical structure you've used to make the decision is sound.

Communicate and Implement

(Questions 12, 14, 18)

The last stage in the decision-making process involves communicating your choice and preparing to implement it. You can try to force your decision on others by demanding their acceptance. Or you can gain their acceptance by explaining how and why you reached your decision. For most decisions – particularly those that need participant buy-in before implementation – it's more effective to gather support by explaining your decision.

Have a plan for implementing your decision. People usually respond positively to a clear plan – one that tells them what to expect and what they need to do. For more information on developing these types of plans, read our articles about project management and change management .

Decision making is a skill – and skills can usually be improved. As you gain more experience making decisions, and as you become more familiar with the tools and structures needed for effective decision making, you'll improve your confidence.

Use this opportunity to think about how you can improve your decision making and take your skills to the next level. Ultimately, improving your decision-making skills will benefit you and your organization.

Ultimately, improving your decision-making skills will benefit you and your organization.

This assessment has not been validated and is intended for illustrative purposes only. It is just one of many Mind Tool quizzes that can help you to evaluate your abilities in a wide range of important career skills.

If you want to reproduce this quiz, you can purchase downloadable copies in our Store .

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Sample toefl imaginary situation essay – making decisions alone, the question:.

Imagine that you must make an important decision that will have a major impact on the rest of your life. You could make the decision entirely on your own, or ask someone to help you make it.  Which would you choose? Use specific reasons and examples to support your choice.

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You can now sign up to have your practice essays evaluated and scored by me!  This service is a great way to learn your current TOEFL level. Sign up today .

The Sample TOEFL Essay:

          ​The choices we make today can have a profound impact on our lives. Personally, if I had to make an important decision about my future I would ask someone for assistance. I feel this way for two reasons, which I will explore in the following essay.

          ​First of all, there is always someone close to us that has been in a related situation. By consulting someone who has made a similar decision in the past, we can more carefully weigh our options. My personal experience is a compelling example of this. When I graduated from high school five years ago I was forced to choose between enrolling in either a trade school or a university. I knew that a trade school would lead to more reliable employment in the future, but I also knew that a university would provide a more stimulating intellectual environment. I did not think that my old-fashioned and practical-minded parents had struggled with the same dilemma in their youth, but when I talked it out with my father I found out that despite his conservative nature he had considered studying the liberal arts. As we talked about his motivations, and some of the regrets associated with his ultimate choice, I was able to more fully consider all of my own options.  

          ​Secondly, when we make decisions alone, we are more likely to make rash and impulsive moves. Talking about a problem with another person takes time, and thus our decision making process is slowed down. For example, when I decided to buy a new car last year I made purchase the very same day that the idea popped into my head. It seemed like a wonderful idea at the time because gas prices were low and there was plenty of parking available on campus. However, when I told one of my classmates about my purchase she reminded me that gas prices always shoot up when we least expect them to, and that parking was only easy to find at that time because it was summer vacation and many students were away. Had I talked about these issues before buying the car, I might have reconsidered whether or not it was a wise idea.

          ​In conclusion, I strongly believe that it is never a smart idea to make decisions without first talking to someone about them. This is because there is always someone in our life who has had to deal with a similar scenario, and because talking about issues prevents us from acting impulsively. 

This sample essay follows our TOEFL writing templates for independent essays.  If you find it useful, please remember that we have many more sample essays  for you to read!

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