Things I Wish I'd Known Regarding the Pitfalls of Decision Making

Have you ever been so emotionally charged you've made an impulse decision that you one day lived to regret?

When I asked my friends what they wish they'd known regarding divorce - about 75% said they wish they knew how to calm the emotional flareups to make more rational decisions. It's like the little guy from the old Atari game who swings over the alligator infested water, when clearly there's a safer path around it...

In the midst of a divorce, your decisions can be jaded by heightened emotions and irrational thinking - these are also called the pitfalls of decision making.

In their book, "How to Make Better Choices in Life and at Work," Chip and Dan Heath discuss common major pitfalls that occur throughout decision making as detailed below:

- Considering too few options, or none beyond what you're stuck on, "Taking My Way or the Highway"

- Only looking for evidence to support your ideas - meaning you're only looking to sources that you know will agree with your intentions - right or wrong

- Making choices based on short-term emotions - giving up, throwing in the towel because your gripped by a visceral emotional.

- Over/Underconfident in how the future will unfold - ASSUMING a solution will come, thereby not being prepared in the event it does not.

Are there solutions? Remedies? Yes, there certainly are. For each pitfall there is an appropriate strategy to put you back in control, with full accountability for all of your decisions. It simply takes looking at your conflict through a variety of lenses... Think about a decision you made that, looking back on it, would have been different had you waited until you could think about it more clearly. Now, make three columns, what happened, what decision it triggered and what decision it should have been. Now think about what you could do that would allow you to get to that better decision the next time. Want to know more? Give me a call and we will W.R.A.P. (hint hint) our head around the issues and get you on the path to better decision making.