How to Always Make the Right Decision
Let me share some decision stories from my recent past with you:
1. Earlier this year, I made the spontaneous decision to shut down some of my active profitable business projects to pursue more creative ventures. I was giving up an ongoing monthly income.
2. Just a few days ago, on the plane from Bali to Munich, I decided to follow through on two specific business ideas among a list of many.
3. I recently made a decision that consequently led to the fatal ending of my relationship. Or so I thought because I will never know the outcome if I hadn‘t made that decision.
4. Several months ago, I had to decide between two publishers, who approached me for a book project on the same topic.
5. A few weeks back I had to suddenly decide where to go and live for at least the next few months.
6. And for this article assignment on challenging conventional wisdom as part of a program I am doing, I came up with 10 topics and had to pick one. That was hard. (You are currently reading the choice I made)
The above are just a few decisions from an infinite pile of big and small ones we all have to make every waking hour.
A few more examples:
„Where should I go and have lunch today?“
„Should I hire someone for this task or do it myself?“
„Should I quit my job and start my own business?“
„I really want a dog – but is it really a good idea to get one?“
„Should I sign up for the gym or the Yoga studio?“
„Should I travel to Peru or New Zealand?“
„Should I make a salad or a curry?“
Do you notice that many decision questions that matter to us start with a variation of „should“?
Some questions are harder to make and some easier – depending on what‘s at stake and how big we perceive the opportunity cost. That‘s the thinking we are taught anyway. We are conditioned to look at decisions as good or bad / right or wrong and that if we choose one, we lose the possibility of the other.
A while back, I found a way to make every decision the right decision, a way that also enables me to completely get rid of opportunity cost and regret.
It started with a simple shift in my mindset. Let me explain:
The power of reframing
When we think of how to make the right decision, we automatically assume that there is a right and wrong decision to make.
But there came a point in my life, where I started to question this belief (like so many others).
Instead, I started asking myself:
What if there are no right or wrong decisions in the first place?
Because right/wrong is an artificial binary concept, just like good/bad.
Inherently, nothing is really ever any of it, only our interpretation based on our belief system makes it so.
So what if every decision – even the one that turns out „wrong“ after all – is the right one?
What if wrong only means uncomfortable, painful, ashamed, weak?
What if none of that is bad?
Here is what I know today – after making a ton of great and awful decisions:
There are no wrong decisions, there is only growth and lessons we need to learn. It all depends on how you frame it.
Just like Steve Jobs said:
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.”
You might look at a decision as wrong or bad at first, when things don‘t work out the way you wanted them to (and who are you to decide anyway?) – but often times, we realize that we actually gained something from it and that it wasn‘t that bad after all.
Think of a decision that first turned out bad but then the bad actually ended up being a good thing.
For example:
A couple of years ago, I was looking to hire a team assistant. I had the choice between a friend and a couple other applicants I didn‘t know personally. I chose the friend. Which did not turn out well at all. It got very frustrating very quickly and I ended up letting her go after only a few weeks. Even though the experience was negative, I got to learn a lot of great lessons around communication, boundaries, and needs. I definitely regretted the decision to work with her at first, but then I was glad it happened because the lessons were necessary for me as a „leader“.
The worst thing you can do is stay stuck in the victim mentality and think that life happens to you. Because reality check: Life always happens for you. It‘s just a matter of you shifting your perspective.
There is so much in value in trusting that life will give you what you need at any given moment and that you are always exactly where you need to be.
So when you think you made the wrong decision, ride it: learn the lessons and gain all the possible insights.
A seemingly bad decision might turn out amazing, but only when you are able to connect the dots looking back. Life demands of us that we take risks, make mistakes and choose the „wrong“ decision.
Reframing and shifting our perspective is just one way to approach decision-making. But how can we improve our general ability to decide between two or more choices? How can we find clarity when in doubt?
Let‘s talk about the available options and which one I recommend.
The old-school way to make decisions
I recently came across two YouTube videos on the subject of decision-making:
How to Make Better Decisions in Life by Nathaniel Drew
How to Make Decisions by Sam Ovens
I actually never finished watching the videos, because they bored me to death. Don‘t get me wrong – I love both Nathaniel and Sam and am inspired by a lot of their content. But when it comes to the topic of decision-making, I feel like they are stuck in outdated programming and conditioning.
In their videos, they talk about the very rational and logical way to come to the „right“ decision. They believe that by going through all these logical exercises and making spreadsheets we can arrive at a point where we have clarity around a decision.
I call this the left-brain masculine approach to decision-making. And there is a lot of that out there. Endless books, articles, and videos discuss all the possible logical ways to make decisions.
On the Farnam Street blog (a resource I generally enjoy a lot), they have an article outlining 109 mental models and an elaborate decision making journal to help make intelligent decisions.
Even though I find mental models fascinating and relevant in some areas in life, I just don‘t find them very useful when making real-life decisions. They might help with understanding human biases, but they only work with one side of the brain: the left one. It’s the one that perceives the world analytically and it focuses on the familiar, on categorizing and on controlling.
We think by rationally learning how to make decisions we can rule out risk, disappointment, failure and making mistakes.
When we are rationalizing our decision-making processes, what we are really doing is chasing the feeling of security and certainty. But both are an illusion.
There is almost never any security in any decision until you make it and see what happens.
The reality is: You might never be fully certain. True freedom lies in the acceptance of that.
You will also never know what the alternative would have been.
If you feel like you have to make spreadsheets and endless pros and cons columns – the answer to your question is no. I will explain in a second.
Is your mind your friend or enemy?
We trust our minds to be capable and competent when in reality and from empirical experience, that is just not always the case.
We trust our seemingly rational thought machines that tell us we are not good enough, that keep us from doing things because they seem risky, that make us procrastinate, that judges others and ourselves often harshly.
There are many amazing things the mind does and I‘m sure it means well by protecting us from possible dangers, but more often than not, it’s our lizard brain taking over
But let‘s be real:
Our minds are full of old unconscious programming, conditioning, biases and limiting beliefs.
Some examples:
“I am not appreciated”
“I don’t have enough skills or knowledge to start a business”
“Building a business is really hard and I don’t have it in me.”
“Things just don’t work out for me.”
I don’t know about you but that doesn’t seem very trustworthy to me.
Our bodies and our intuition, on the other hand, are way smarter than most of us want to believe.
How many times did you make a decision from your mind and against your intuition and it turned out bad?
How many times did your intuition say to you „I told you so!“
Upgrade your decision-making puperpower
If our minds are not to be trusted, what now?
Well, there is a lot that we are never really taught growing up. But that doesn‘t make it any less relevant and valuable. On the contrary. Sometimes, the things we don‘t know that we don‘t know are the key to liberation.
Society and school put most of their focus on the rational mind. We learn to trust our minds more than our bodies and their signals. The problem is that our minds like to cause confusion, while our bodies and our intuition are experts at knowing what is good for us. But we tend to ignore them in favor of the mind and rational logic.
Many of us don‘t even receive their signals, because their lives and minds are so noisy, they can’t hear the messages – and even when they do, they don‘t trust them. Nice work, society.
So how can we improve the way we make decisions?
Step 1: Get to know yourself properly
The better you know yourself, the more connected you are to yourself and the easier it is for you to make decisions.
What are your values?
What is truly important to you?
How do you want to feel on a daily basis? (Every goal we want to reach is really just a feeling that we are chasing)
What does a fulfilling life look and feel like for you?
The more you are rooted and aligned with your values and needs, the more you signal to your body: This is me, this is my truth, this feels good.
On this basis, you can always check in with yourself and see if a decision is in line with who you are and your individual truth.
Step 2: Start making hell-yeah decisions from „down there“
Stop trying to make decisions purely from your mind. Our bodies never lie.
Some call it intuition. Others call it “sixth sense” or “gut feeling” or “inner voice”. Call it whatever you want.
The baseline for any decision I make is:
It has to feel good. And by good, I mean „Hell Yeah“-good. This is how I measure everything and every decision in my life:
Is it a Hell Yeah? If not, it‘s a no.
I learned this years and years ago from Derek Sivers.
A different variation is the “10 out of 10 approach” by Kyle Cease.
Or Naval‘s compass of „If you can‘t make a decision, it‘s a no.“
These approaches bypass the mind and go straight to the truth within you.
Here is what this approach asks of you:
Your full honesty. You can‘t bullshit yourself into thinking something is a Hell Yeah. You feel a Hell Yeah or a 10/10 intuitively in your body. Anything but a Hell Yeah is a no – and that might be a tough realization to accept at times.
Let me ask you these questions:
Is your job/business a Hell Yeah?
Is your romantic relationship a Hell Yeah?
Is your apartment / house / living situation a Hell Yeah?
Is your haircut a Hell Yeah?
You get the idea.
I don‘t need to rationalize or explain my decisions anymore because I trust my Hell Yeahs fully. It‘s so simple and the only way I navigate life these days.
Sometimes I have to make a decision that doesn‘t feel like a Hell Yeah, but at least I am aware of it and conscious of it and I am not trying to trick myself in believing otherwise. Then it‘s about taking responsibility for making a non-Hell-Yeah decision. That‘s totally cool, at times we have our reasons for doing so, but I invite you to be conscious of self-sabotage.
There are occasional instances where the Hell Yeah isn‘t clear. That‘s usually because it‘s not.
I recently was in between buying a van and going to Bali (had an unused return flight) to finish writing my book. I went back and forth and back and forth – clearly, neither was a full Hell Yeah. I eventually ended up talking about both choices at length with a friend and as I was talking, I FELT that even though going to Bali wasn‘t a full Hell Yeah, it was still the better choice in my body. And that‘s ok – it‘s totally fine to make non-Hell-Yeah choices – just make the one that‘s more like it.
So if you find yourself in between two or three decisions, just know that none of them are IT, because you feel a Hell Yeah from five miles away. When something feels like a Hell Yeah, you know. You don‘t have to explain or rationalize or make a choice. You feel it and you go for it, no decision necessary.
Think about a time when a decision was a Hell Yeah. When you knew without a doubt in your body that something was a clear Yes or No. Even if your mind came up with doubts, your body knew and you didn‘t think twice about pursuing the Hell Yeah option.
To make intuitive decision-making a little less black or white, here are two more ways you can use your body to make decisions – when you think about a decision you need to make:
Does it feel expanding or contracting in your body?
Does it feel light or heavy?
Again, these are sensations in our body that are easier to get in touch with the more you are connected with your body.
Great ways to practice that are:
Meditation and body scan
Learning to feel and name feelings/emotions in your body
Yoga
Breathwork
Dancing
Massage
Being in nature
And lastly, here is the simplest decision-making method ever:
Flip a coin.
When the coin is in mid-air – you know which side of the coin you want to see when it lands. That’s your decision right there, you don’t even have to check the coin.
The mind + body decision smoothie
„But Conni…“ I can hear you say.
What about business decisions? What if there is a lot at stake?
Well, same thing. How many bad and fatal decisions have been made by important people in this world? A lot. I still deeply believe that our bodies and our intuition show us the way always, they never lie. Our minds on the other hand are often attached to extrinsic motivations and driven by fear.
What about irrational decisions? Are you telling me I should quit my job tomorrow because my body tells me so?
No, I am not saying you should take unnecessary risks. I want you to be conscious of what your truth is and start acting on it, even if it means tiny little steps toward making the big Hell Yeah decision.
Some decisions require you to find a good balance between your mind and body compass. But that still doesn’t mean you have to start making spreadsheets.
Bring the two worlds together. That’s the magic in the end.
Yes, mental models and understanding yourself and the world help to make decisions that are more sound. But in the end, you want to make decisions that feel good. That’s what decisions are all about. Your mind doesn’t quite understand “feel good” though. Our minds don’t feel, they think. So you can’t purely trust your computer. Consult your “down there”. It knows.
Just remember when checking in with your mind to make the decision about you instead of doing what you think you should do based on other people‘s voices and expectations. Check in with your conditioning and programming. Check in with self-sabotage. Check in with limiting beliefs and old stories. Check in with fear of failure and making mistakes.
Easy vs hard decisions
Our brains like to avoid short-term pain, but I highly encourage your to lean towards the fear.
Take the path thats more difficult and challenging in the short term.
Consider my learning:
Hard choices, easy life.
Easy choices, hard life.
If you make hard choices in short-term, in the long-term you will an easy life.
Pick and run
The truth is:
There are instances when you can not practically make a good decision. It’s impossible.
The solution is:
Stop overthinking it.
Tune into your body and feel into the Hell Yeah.
Pick one decision and never ever consider looking back.
Regret is scary.
It’s destructive to do the “shoulda woulda coulda”. This way of thinking will make you unhappy and you cannot live your life that way.
Take risks.
Walk into the unknown.
Risk failure. Risk making mistakes instead of trying to avoid them.
Make a decision, own it and move on with your life.
Stop wasting time NOT doing and NOT taking action.
No decision. No progress.
No regrets, ever.
There are no right or wrong decisions.
“It is impossible to live without failing at something unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, in which case you have failed by default.”
J.K. Rowling
There’s no such thing as the wrong decision.
There’s simply the decision you make.
Just make the damn decision, will ya?
What decisions are you sitting on that are difficult for you to make?
What is keeping you from making them?