In life everyone needs to know how to make good decisions.
Up until now I have emphasized the need to use critical thought in making decisions. I still believe that people need to spend more time controlling their emotions to make better decisions. However there is a place for emotions in decision making. The use of emotions in decision making is something we will cover more in a later blog.
Logical decisions may take days to make where emotional decisions are usually made quite quickly. How the emotional decision has been rewarded in the past will make a difference as to its quality. The quality of quickly made decisions can be seen in dog training and in playing chess. When a quick decision needs to be made one’s past history makes the likelihood of a good decision more or less likely.
There are a few ways to develop the right history for a given decision and I believe all of them play a huge role in making good decisions.
Practice
One way to develop the right history for making good decisions is to make a lot of bad decisions. This is one purpose of practice and drills. We play many games of chess and lose many games of chess. Over time we have a feeling for the right move. Then we check to make sure there are no seen pitfalls to the move.
Mental Rehearsal
We can also invent a history be thinking through the problem and applying each alternative decision in our mind. This is not always accurate but it does give one a better chance at making better decisions. One can ask themselves what will most likely happen if I do this? What else could happen if I do this? When we have worked through two or more choices we can then compare the predicted outcomes. Mental rehearsal is important but we must realize that, we don’t have all the facts when making decisions. Not having all the facts requires that we remain flexible with our decisions.
To remain flexible one must continue to ask question, even once the decision has been made.
Education
We can also learn to make good decisions from an education. One reason for studying history is to learn about what worked and what didn’t work in the past. When I think about my own decision making I remember advice given to me mostly about what not to do. Advice and warnings about catastrophic threats are steeped in emotion.
This is just a brief summary of some of the elements that can go into good decision making. What is your recipe for making decisions? How does your decision making affect your life, your loved ones, and your dog?
Wishing you the very best,
Andrew Ledford