Wisdom Strategy Research Institute

Your life is the sum - total of the decisions you have made, are making, and will make. History is the fabric of decisions that humanity has made.

If you want to have a great life, consistently make great decisions.

There are no completely inconsequential decisions. Obviously, some decisions are more impactful than others. However, every decision you make contributes in some way, small or large, to how you experience life.

Sometimes we put certain classes of decisions more or less on auto pilot. We call those habits.

So, if making great decisions is so important, how do we make them.

The following step by step process contains the best wisdom of how to make great decisions.

1) What is the situation? Describe it using all of your senses.

2) What are your feelings and emotions about the situation? Negative and inappropriate emotions can interfere with reaching high quality decisions. A lot of intuitive wisdom is contained in our emotions.

3) Acknowledge, receive and learn from the messages of your emotions.

4) Resolve, heal and release any negative emotions. If this isn't done, the decision will either be an expression of the emotional pain, or an attempt to resolve it.

5) Access a state of peak decision making. States such as centered, self esteem, grounded, curious, calm, acceptance, pro-active, courage, detachment, optimism, interested, faith, and compassion make a good gestalt from which to decide.

6) Clarify your values, needs, fears, and desired results. The question, "What's most important to me in this situation?" is the foundation.

A) Resolve, and integrate any values conflicts and underlying negative motivations for each value.

B) Put your values, needs and desired results into a hierarchy of importance.

7) Brainstorm at least 3 options for meeting each of your values, needs and desired results.

8) Assemble some or all of the options into "super - options". The status-quo, how things are now (or doing nothing - making no change) is automatically a super-option by default.

9) Release attachments to the advantages / disadvantages, benefits / detriments, and likes / dislikes of each super - option.

10) Watch a movie of implementing each super - option and how things are likely to unfold. What would happen? Then what? Then what? etc.

What did you learn about each option? Can you revise or eliminate any options?

11) Then experience implementing each option as you are living it from inside. Notice the quality of your experience while implementing each one.

What can you learn about each super option from this point of view? Can you revise or eliminate any options?

12) Step into each person likely to be involved or affected by each super - option and pretend you are them and imagine experiencing each option from these perspectives.

A) Again, what did you learn? Based on this information, can you revise or eliminate any options?

13) Think of a significant vantage point for an eternal perspective, such as God, Earth, The Universe, The unfolding of history, a mountain, The Sun or moon, Yin and Yang, The Ocean, 7 generations into the future, All Time Space, etc. If you are spiritual or religious you can use your spiritual tradition as a reference for this.

A) what can you learn from this perspective? How can you adjust or revise your options?

14) Finally, step back into your self and notice the subtle and not so subtle thoughts and emotions the previous steps may have brought up for you.

15) Sometimes by now it will be abundantly clear what your course of action is. Other times it will be that there are lingering negative impacts that seem associated with an option. If so, in what ways might you be able to do lessen, minimize, mitigate, transform, eliminate or utilize these negative consequences?

16) Based on all you have done in this process, including your mitigation plans from step 15 what is your decision?

17) Gather the mental, emotional, physical, informational, relational resources needed to implement your decision.

18) Mentally rehearse successfully handling a variety of possible scenarios until you feel confident.

19) Courageously take massive action until you achieve your desired results, or you receive significant information that altering either your implementation plan or your overall decision is necessary or wise. If you receive such information recycle to step 1. Be flexible, persistent, and committed. Obstacles are only feedback.

For small decisions you can greatly abbreviate this process. The more you practice this when the stakes are small, the more quickly and easily you will be able to make a high quality decision when it really counts.

After you get used to this, the process can flow smoothly and quickly.