Sunday, May 20, 2007

How Do You Make Decisions?

Values and Purpose
Intuition
Logic and information
Expert Advice
Feelings and Emotion
Fate and Chance
Divine Guidance
Past Experiences

Evaluate how you normally make decisions. Now ask yourself which one you never use to make a choice. What if you had a decision to make and you stepped into each one of these and tried it on for size. There might be some benefits.
When I did this exercise in coaching school, I generally made decisions out of Divine Guidance and Logic and Information. After exploring myself more and learning and growing as a person, I went back a year later and did the exercise again and was surprised that my decision making process expanded into more areas, I hadn't been using.
The exercise was this. They made a big wheel on the floor out of tape. The wheel was divided into categories. Each piece of the pie was labeled one of these. We were to walk around the wheel and stand in each section and see what it felt like to make a decision each way. After we had gone around the circle, each person had to pick the one they used the most and tell why. Then we had to go stand in the piece of pie that we used the least and tell why. What was interesting about this was that you heard each person's perspective. They each made a lot of sense. I could see the benefits of using different methods. Sometimes we get into our box and don't want to do things a different way. I realized that the other perspectives were valid and useful. Now when making a decision, I have so many more ways of looking at things and deciding.

1 comment:

Elder Gifford & Wendy Nielsen said...

I appreciate your quest to help others as well as your personal quest for self knowledge. Keep it up.

Wendy