Decision making is a vital part of human existence.
There was a time in every man's life that someone else took a decision on his behalf. This is the period of childhood. At that stage, the decision surrounding the survival of a child rests squarely on the parents or guardian. Once the stage passes, man becomes the product of his decisions.
A good decision could liberate a man beyond his imagination while a bad decision could sink a man severely. It is due to this fact that someone must be careful when making a decision.
Decision making is not something one can run away from. As simple as selection of what to eat is, a wrong decision can subject someone to physiological imbalance.
When I am at the point of making a decision, I do many things to be in charge of the situation. First of all, I do critical analysis of the options before me. If the options are two or three, I analyze the benefits and demerits attached to each choice.
I look at my life goal and this guides me in making decisions. I have my vision in life and I go on many missions to actualize it. When deciding on anything, I analyze how helpful it is to my vision. My vision can't be compromised. As a result of this, a decision that would threaten the actualization of my vision is trashed timely.
One experience that I have in this regard was when I was looking for a job after my undergraduate degree. My vision was to work in academics. My interest was to be a teacher and researcher in a university or polytechnic but when my choice wasn't forthcoming, I took up a teaching position with a secondary school. The salary was meager and I didn't relent in my efforts to secure another job.
While I was teaching, an opportunity surfaced for me to work in a bank. The offer came with more than 100% increments in remunerations than the school. I was to decide within a few days whether to resign my teaching job and join the bank.
I was in a dilemma for a moment. I related it with many people around me and majority of them advised me to go for the banking job.
I paused for a moment and analyzed the two choices in front of me. If I go for the banking job, I may have access to better pay but the job would create more gap between me and my dream to be an academic. Whereas the salary in the school was small, I believed that such work served a better purpose for achieving my vision.
I rejected the banking job offer and today, I am proud that I made that decision.
The kind of decision before me determines how long it takes me to act. I explore the process which includes analysis of the choices, consultation of people who might have walked that path in the past after which I reanalyze the choices and decide on one.
I take my time to complete the process as long as it's not a time bound decision. If it is time bound, I fast track the process so that I can make a decision before the time expiration. I don't rush in making decisions unless it is in the form of an urgency.
No matter how good one is in reading into the future to predict the possible consequence of a decision being taken, one can not always get it the way he wished. It is on this premise that I trained my mind to be prepared for failure.
No matter how sure a decision that I am making is, even if I am adding 1 and 1, I get prepared for a way to handle an answer other than 2. By doing so, the results of a badly made decision doesn't hit me severely.
I take responsibility for the results of my decisions. I don't push blame to anyone else even if it was your advice that I took to decide the way I did. As much as I feel down with a decision that made things not go as planned, I relate my mind back to other decisions that I made in the past that turned out as great. With this mechanisms, I would be able to cope with the disappointment.
Thank you for your time. I will appreciate your comment.