How to Become more Decisive

"Using the power of decision gives you the capacity to get past any excuse to change any and every part of your life in an instant." 

- Tony Robbins

"It is in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped." 

- Tony Robbins

"A real decision is measured by the fact that you've taken a new action. If there's no action, you haven't truly decided." 

- Tony Robbins

Life is essentially a big decision. We decide how we are going to live it and this shapes our future. No two lives are the same and it's these individual personal decisions that make up our life.

On a daily basis we are faced with decisions, in fact everything we do, we have to decide to do in the first place. 

Decisions are powerful things, and as pointed out by the quotes at the top of this post, they affect our whole lives. We can be on one course, and yet in an instant our whole lives can be changed because of a seemingly simple decision. 

For example, lets pretend that you didn't live where you did at the moment, that before you moved to your house, you decided to move somewhere else. If you take a moment to think about that, you'll realise how much of your life would have been affected. You would probably have different friends, would've gone to different schools or workplaces, maybe your career would have been completely different, maybe you would have been better-off, maybe worse-off, your personality could have been different, etc. 

It would have been from that one decision causing your whole life to have been changed, history rewritten in a sense. 

Now that I've hopefully shown what big things decisions are, I'm going to share with you how you can become more decisive. Life can be overwhelming sometimes, and can be daunting. Making decisions can become tough, but you need to have the clarity to make the right decisions for your own life. It's time you became more decisive. 

1. Every thing has an outcome

Like I mentioned before, every single thing that happens in our life has an outcome. Decisions can greatly alter and affect the outcome, but indecisiveness can also be a factor. There will be an ending result as a cause to indecisiveness, so instead of not deciding, make the decision so you can do the best you can to alter a more favourable outcome. 

2. Trust yourself

Don't always be so hard and negative on yourself. If you believe that you're always going to make a bad decision, then you'll become indecisive. Instead, trust in the decision you make and stick with it. If it is a bad decision, then just make the decision to move on from it, or to change the outcome of the choice. 

Everyone makes mistakes, it's having the ability to learn from them that helps you grow. 

3. Be quick

If you're a person that will make a decision, but takes a long time doing so, then start to speed up the time you make decisions in. A good guideline to go by, is allowing a maximum time limit of 1 minute. In that time, weigh up the pros and cons of the choices, and then decide. As soon as a minute has been reached, just force yourself to make a choice. 

Make sure that you stick with it, and like I mentioned in point#2; if it's a bad decision, just learn from it. 

Doing this simple technique will also allow you to make better decisions in the future, in a shorter amount of time.  

4. Try something new

Decide at the start of a day, that you're going to try and do something that you wouldn't normally do when faced with a choice. 

This may sound like a pointless exercise to help you to become decisive, but actually, trying new things will help you become more open to different things, helping you to not only become slightly more outgoing, but will also help you to become a better decision-maker.

5. Think of the outcome

In your mind plan forward to the expected outcome, granted life has many unexpected outcomes, but when you make a decision, there is a certain outcome you're expecting. 

Try to imagine yourself in that end scenario, thinking about the pros and cons of the choice you could make. Weigh up all the decisions, and go for the one you could see yourself benefiting from the most (unless if it's at the expense of others).