Episode 6: The Art of Making Decisions

Is quick decision-making a strength or a weakness?

I tend to pride myself at being good at decision-making. Recently, I was talking with a friend who told me that one of the reasons she went to therapy was because she had a hard time making decisions. This led to a whole conversation between us about where decision-making abilities stem from and how parent interactions from her childhood made her second guess herself. That made me rethink if there are ways that I parent that are blocking my kids ability to feel confident in their decisions. And, it made me think about decision-making, in general, in a whole new way.

Whether you’re a leader at your job, a parent, or simply an adult that lives on Earth, you have to make decisions all day long. For me, I spend my days editing images (sometimes deciphering between the tiniest of variances like in the example above), creating designs, choosing colors, and picking if I like something enough to talk, write, or post about it. My job is that of a constant editor of a variety of things and that makes me quick and decisive when it comes to making decisions in most areas of my life. That’s probably why I tend to be in charge of choosing restaurants (and what to order at those restaurants) and get asked for help with choosing paint colors (for someone’s wall) all the time within both my family and friend groups.

However, I also find that I tend to rush into decision-making
because I want to cross it off my list.

I want to book that flight now (when I could wait to see if the price goes down).
I want to give someone an email response in a timely manner.
I want to not have things loom over me and just be done with it.

But, when I rush a decision, sometimes I regret my word choice, how I approached my answer, or wish I had said no instead of saying yes. And so I wanted to dissect this all a little bit to help those of you who struggle with making decisions in some way or another by showing you how I’m trying to approach my decision-making a little better, too…