The Male Ideal

Throughout my life I have struggled with many complex decisions and usually the decisions I have made have been poor and almost always the worst ones I could have made.

In the past few years my decision making abilities have been progressively dwindling to the point that almost every decision I have made in the last few years has been shockingly awful.

Surprisingly what I have noticed is that the more intensely I struggle with a decision the more sure I can be that the eventual decision I will arrive at will be spectacularly bad.

So I just decided to create a sort of road map for myself as to how I can make better decisions.

What have been the loud and obvious characteristics of my bad decisions ?

1. They have all been made after a long and careful deliberation.
2. Many of them have been made under the influence of a strong emotion.
3. Fear, Greed, Desire and Egocentricity have been the most influential among these emotions.
4. Lethargy and fear of society has contributed a lot in me making a lot of bad choices.
5. Many times inspite of knowing what’s the right thing to do, I have given in to paralysis and made shockingly bad decisions just to avoid the discomfort and pain of conflict or confrontation with my own self or others.
6. Since I am very concerned with appearances I sometimes make really really bad decisions for the sake of preserving my appearances.
7. The pros and cons list is just useless in the face of emotional pressure, and every important decision is invariably emotionally charged.
8. Many of my worst decisions are the decisions that I have not made at all, I have just vacillated back and forth and procrastinated in making a decision long enough hoping for something akin to divine intervention to make the decision for me.
9. I am afraid of making decisions that will put me in charge or make me responsible for any sort of a group activity that could end up in making me responsible for results.
10. I have been escaping from the pain of making decisions in particularly difficult situations by self-sabotaging.

What have been the best characteristics of my fantastic decisions ?

1. They have been made instantaneously.
2. They have been made fast.
3. They have been made to sometimes adhere to crazy deadlines.
4. They have been usually verbalized at some level.
5. They have felt light (as in no or low emotional pressure)
6. They have been usually made at a deeper level than the conscious (sub conscious ????)
7. They have felt Noble. (as in honest/principled/congruent to who I am)
8. Making them has sometimes given me the strength and courage needed to act on them.
9. They have been sometimes triggered by non-verbal or symbolical signals.
10. Sometimes sleeping overnight has helped.
11. Many times they have happened midway of doing the actual act, about which the decision itself was supposed to be made (on the fly).
12. They have been always made without triggering the destructive emotions of fear, greed, desire and egocentricity.
13. They have felt right.
14. They have given enormous benefits even later.
15. They have strengthened the core of who I am.
16. They have given emotional strength and added to my self esteem/confidence/ self-respect etc.

So finally how do I make better decisions ???

Here are a few ideas

• Procrastination:
  One of the first things you need to stop doing is let a decision hang in the air infinitely. This has to stop if you cannot make a decision in a reasonable period of time, then put a deadline to the decision and pick one option no deliberation and stick to it.
• Verbalizing and stating the decision to be made clearly.
  Sometimes the decisions that need to be made have to first be clearly stated so that the mind and the subconscious can both be brought into play.
• Increase the quantity of decisions made
  Since decision making is a skill it will improve over time provided more and decisions are made with complete awareness.
• Handle the emotional pressure
  Many decisions are laid off track by mounting pressure so make sure you just don’t trigger the emotional states which result in bad decision making. Find a way to side step the emotional pressures by making the decisions far in the future, by paying heed to the fear and stimulants such as desire and greed, or postponing the rewards and identifying and staying away from the situations that usually result in bad decisions.
• Control the environment
  Many bad decisions are the result of the environment so make sure you act consciously contrarian in familiar or auto-pilot situations. (like drinking at a party, never saying hi to friendly people, making poor eye-contact, never being pro-active about meeting people do the opposite of this auto pilot behaviors consciously)
• Try to deliberately lead yourself
  Since you almost invariably make bad escapist decisions to avoid bad situations, try to deliberately lead yourself into situations where you have made poor choices in the past and then slowly try to lead yourself into making the right choices consciously this time.
• Throw yourself under the bus.
  Since many life changing decisions would be still stumped by fear no matter how much you try to avoid it. For important decisions which are forever haunted by fear throw yourself under the bus literally by putting things in motion like calling up someone to set a meeting or saying hi to a group of people or volunteering to lead or to execute something mildly important.
• Celebrate your triumph over fears
  Since better decision making skills will involve winning over fears celebrate even the smallest triumph over fears
• Self-control is finite
  Do not rely on self control to make better decisions as self control is a finite resource, so make decisions with as less reliance on self control as possible. Also actively ration for the lack of self control when making important decisions like diet or sticking to an exercise regime.
• Make decisions consciously
  Make every trivial decision consciously with complete awareness and let every important decision float to the top from your sub conscious.
• Trust your gut.
  Listen to your instincts but learn to distinguish between instincts and fears. If a decision will cause you to feel dis-empowered anytime later it’s your fear not your instinct.
• Double the speed of your decision making
  Double the speed of your decision making by making random decisions fast and instinctively without considering the options like ordering without looking at a menu in a familiar restaurant or commenting on someone in a friendly manner or helping someone without thinking .
• Mix it up
  Make simple choices differently like waking up at a different times, taking naps at all hours, waking in mid night or reading or researching strange things or exercising or anything that you do habitually, just do it differently.
• Take short and long moments
  Take a short moment to be aware of the clarity and conscious that lies behind your mind, acknowledge it and then move forward with awareness to benefit from the clarity that lies behind the chatter of the mind.
• Pay less heed to your mind
  The lesser heed you pay to the mind the more you can produce. Be a person who produces or creates real value constantly as it will bring you more and more freedom from the mind and will engage you more and more in the real world.
• Stay out of fantasies
  Less fantasies and more engagement with the real world so more you overcome day dreaming and ego fueled fantasies the more you can engage in the present.
• Live Intensely in current situations
  The more intensely you live in the current situation the more deeply you engage in the problems in front of you the better can you deal with the decisions of the present.
• Shun appearances
  Whenever you make decisions fueled with the need to maintain appearances do something immediately contrarian and inappropriate, so that your true nature is expressed and your mind is not imprisoned in the prison of maintaining appearances for other peoples sake.