Decisions play a vital role in our day to day lives. A correct decision can uplift you and fulfill your expectations. On the contrary a wrong decision can mar your life with serious consequences. An effective decision helps in bringing about the state of affairs you are expecting. Effective decisions are essential in our lives for marriage, education, career choices and family matters. It is also essential for corporate, political and government matters. In fact decisions are made right from childhood up to retirement or even beyond that period.
The ability to make effective decision is a prime requirement for both professional and personal happiness. It is concerned with consulting people and taking them into confidence on an informal basis. Your decision need not necessarily be entirely on the advice of your friends and family. The information and advice from those you consult needs to be an addition to other facts, your gut, feelings and prejudices which have already been accumulated by you.
When you elicit information and take advice from others you start to understand what your decision is likely to involve and when it should be made. It also helps you to distinguish fact from opinion.
Some people are reluctant to take advice from others on personal decisions. The reluctance on their part may be due to pride, arrogance or secretiveness. If you wish to see fatuous self importance, you should watch such persons, when arrogance is matched by incompetence, certitude by incorrect decision and knowledge by banalities. What they need to understand is that when they choose to make decisions alone, they loose a wealth of information and experience found in other people. I do not advocate you to entirely depend on others advice for your decisions. Such dependence on other can turn out to be counter productive in as much as they allow yourself to be solely governed by decisions made by others. In fact submitting to other's decision without, taking into consideration the facts which you have already gathered on the matter can adversely affect your life as they are based on feelings inappropriate to you. You will never learn from your good and bad decisions.
Before you take advice from others you should plan your strategy properly. Plan who you are going to consult and what you actually need to ask that person which will help you to arrive at a correct and effective decision. That way you can be in charge of the advice you eventually receive. Further when you consult your friend or relative ensure that the person has adequate knowledge about the matter you intend to consult. It is important that you consult someone who knows you very well. He will be in a position to predict the consequences of your decision.
Rushing to a friend or your relative on an impulse, will end in your decision being a complete fiasco. When an impulsive decision is made by you despite your gut feelings and your intrinsic instinct cautioning you that such decision will not be hunky dory with your life, you end up in regretting your reckless act of letting your whimsical heart rule your head. Sometimes an impulsive decision though being innocuous is doubly dubious. More over people visualise that you have a penchant for converting every decision into a raging controversy. In such an event you are faced with one or two choices either back your instinct and trust cold logic or tread the beaten path.
When you consult a friend and make a decision based on his advice you tend to pass on the responsibility to your friend and blame him when the decision goes wrong. This culminates in loosing your friend. Most importantly remember that you are solely responsible for your decisions and your friend's advice is only an output for making your decision. To save your friendship you need to collect as much information as possible on the matter before you translate your friend's advice into your decision. If you feel that the advice given by your friend will not help you to make a correct decision do not offend or annoy him by rejecting his advice outright. Most people do understand that you need to make your own decisions. The best course of action would be to point out to him in a friendly way that his advice was considered seriously, however it was found that it is not the determining factor. This way you give your friend an impression that his output was useful but it was not the determining factor. This perhaps will save your friendship.
In a marriage joint decision is always desirable in personal matters. Sometimes the wife does not participate with the husband in making decision, leaving the decision making entirely to her husband. (In some cases vice versa is also in vogue). An illustration in this regard is as follows.
Let us say the wife for the sake of argument desists from expressing a firm opinion. She will be content with discussing the matter with her husband in a noncommittal way. She is happy to listen to her husband talk about the decision but when it comes to making a decision she never makes herself clear about her preference. Eventually decisions after decisions are made by the husband only. The husband takes his wife for granted and goes ahead fully convinced that his wife will not come of the fence.
As this pattern of decision prevails in the family, life gets more and more determined by the husband rather than jointly. By not joining in the decision making, the wife has absolved herself of the consequences arising out of the decision. It is apparent that her acquiescence, Concealed a fundamental lack of commitment. Even though she may not opt to walk out of the door she will leave him emotionally and perhaps mentally.
A joint decision is always preferable when it comes to educating their children, a marriage proposal for their offspring or whether to move out of the house. In such matters tactful adjustments should be made without anyone partner imperiously foisting his / her view point on the other.
A paranoid person fears consulting others before making a decision. His fear is based on his imagination and illusion. The person fears the advice sought from others may do him more harm than good. The person fears that whatever he reveals to others may be used against him. He fears ridicule and imagines that others may upset his apple cart. But he does not foresee, the harm he inflicts on him by making a decision in isolation. Paradoxically the best way to allay his fears would be to tell all the details to everyone. This way the matter ceases to be a secret and it is much likely that people will not use the information against him.
Apropos corporate decisions the officials are not only responsible but accountable as well. The official is required to make decisions based on merit of each case and within the ambit of the corporate rules and regulations.
Successful people take initiative. They believe that responsibility is taken, not given. Successful people are passionate about the things they do.
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