Are you lousy at making decisions for yourself?

The ideal of decision making is to reach a decision based on a logical, rational and objective thinking process. We may have a better chance of following that formula when we’re making decisions that don’t affect us personally.

Decisions that affect us personally are quite another manner. We have to stop here and honestly admit that we have a vested interest in our own decision making. The virtues of logic, rational and objectivity have to complete against our ego identity, beliefs and attitudes and personal gains and benefits.

We all want to believe that we are capable of making the best decisions for ourselves. Friends and family may think otherwise, but we carry a certainty with us that we know what’s best for us. We stubbornly hang on to this belief because we don’t want others making decisions for us.

The part where we get into trouble is the belief that we are equally good at making decisions in all areas. We may make great decisions when it comes to solving problems, organizing and strategic planning. However, we’re probably our own worst enemy when it comes to making decisions for ourselves.

You too may find when it comes to personal decisons they’re not your best and here are some possible reasons why this may be happening to you. 

1. You have a self identity to maintain with decisions that support it.
2. Any decision you make about yourself you can rationalize as to why it’s a good decision
3. You have your own built-in logic system that works for you and requires quite a challenge before you’re willing to make any changes to it
4. You’re a creature of comfortable habits, and the easiest decisions are the ones based on familiarity and your predictable behavior
5. You have a vested interest in your personal beliefs, attitudes, viewpoints and worldview and without being open-minded personal objectivity is harder
6. You make personal decisions to support what you think you want and need only to find out the decisions doesn’t get you that.
7. You also might be the type that panics and you make a decision without giving it much thought just so you don’t have to think about it anymore. 

Maybe it’s time to stand back for a moment and see that the decisions you make about yourself have a lot to do with your self identity, thinking patterns, belief and attitudes, and personal wants and needs. It may explain why some of your decisions are lousy and not providing the results you expected.

Give it some thought and feel free to comment.