![]() ![]() There’s little doubt in his mind that the job he has been offered would be better than his current one. Let me give you an example of how this can work.Ī coaching client of mine was struggling to decide whether to take up a job offer that will mean moving to new city. Thus, achieving certain desired outcomes can lead to feelings of satisfaction and relief rather than frustration or disappointment, whilst behaving in a way that is aligned with our values allows us to feel balanced and comfortable rather than anxious and fretful. ![]() ![]() Goals are essentially internal representations of what we want to achieve in life and values are representations of how we want to live.īoth of those ideas centre on how we want to feel. Given the role that emotions play in complex decision making, using goals and values for guidance seems to be appropriate considering that they each undoubtedly have an emotional component. The emotional content of goals and values Sometimes just trusting your gut is all you need to do.īut if you want to at least feel that you have some control over the process, you can provide some guidance for your emotions by having in mind your goals and values when you are trying to make hard decisions. And I’ll bet that in most cases those decisions turned out no worse than decisions you made following a detailed rational analysis. She says that decisions are the means by which our emotions guide us to avoid negative feelings and maximise positive feelings.Īnd, if you think about it, you will no doubt have experienced times when you’ve made tough decisions based upon an emotional response or a gut instinct. In fact, for Harvard University’s Jennifer Lerner, a leading decision researcher, emotions are always at the centre of the decision making process. The simple answer is that we look beyond our powers of reasoning and engage our emotions. So what do we do when we need to make a decision that involves difficult choices? It is therefore very hard for us to make good decisions by weighing the relative merits of the different factors and reaching a final choice that we can feel comfortable with. The problem is that when decisions become more complex there are many more different factors to consider, each with varying levels of importance for us. Thus, when we’re faced with a choice between three or four different non-complex items (such as kitchen utensils), we can consider common characteristics such as size, colour or price and make comparisons between the items that help us to make our choice. Research does indeed show that applying a reasoning process is the best way to make relatively simple decisions. We assume there is a right answer and we that just need to find it. We are instinctively drawn into thinking that complex decisions demand that we apply the highest levels of our intellect. One of the problems with these kinds of difficult decisions is that we think we need to engage our powers of reason to find the answer. How to make an impossible decision: the role of reason And, in all but the most recent cases, I found it practically impossible to decide. All of them had multiple factors for and against the various options. After 10 years in Australia, I had to decide whether to uproot my family and move back to the UK.Īll of these decisions were complex and stressful.I had to decide whether to stay in the corporate world or start my own business and.I had to decide whether to invest huge amounts of time and money in becoming a professional coach, and.I had to decide if I should try to stay in legal practice when I arrived in Australia, even though, ridiculously, it meant virtually re-qualifying.I had to decide whether to leave behind all my friends and family in the UK and move across the world to Australia, where my wife comes from.Exactly how to make an impossible decision has troubled me enormously as I’ve wrestled with some really tough choices in the last few years. ![]()
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