8 tips to always make the right choices

Follow your intuition? Toss heads or tails? Let the night take advice? There are 1001 ways to make decisions. We explain everything about the art of making the right choices.

How to make the right choice when doubt settles? Our emotions, our habits or even mental fatigue can blur the tracks. Here are 8 concrete tips to see more clearly and resume power on your decisions.

Choose: a process far from obvious

10,000. This is the average number of choices that we have to make every day. From the simplest-what am I going to put today? What are we going to eat tonight? Film or series? -At the most radical-Is this man good? Should we leave this job that no longer flourishes me? Have a child or not?

However banal as it may be, the decision is far from an obvious process. These choices to be placed occupy a large part of our brain and can even lead to hours of anxiety or rumination when the indecision is watching … “Choose, explains Cathy Assenheim, neuropsychologist and author of I hesitate, is in fact an extremely complex and largely unconscious brain mechanism. It is a kind of ballet between the rational part of the brain and the emotional part, with several round trips which can be parasitized at every moment, to the point of bringing us to make bad choices or to make any. ”

Is your brain reliable?

Frédéric Donfk, decision -making coach and author of The effective decision existsSpecifies: “Several major factors influence decisions, including basic physiological data: you are hungry, you are afraid, you are tired? Your brain will send the decision, because the most important thing for it is to meet your basic needs in priority.

Same with your emotions. You should know that making a decision is expensive in the brain. He therefore prefers to decide as quickly as possible, favoring simpler, faster and less demanding approaches. ” This is where cognitive biases, shortcuts of thought come to make us to make spontaneous decisions, but not necessarily relevant.

8 tips for making better decisions

The subject is so vast that there is even a “science of decision”, that is to say. Here are some tips to help you master the art of decision.

1. Listen to your needs … or your desires?

For the specialist, understanding the distinction between need and envy is crucial in the decision -making process. For her, Our desires come from our head and are parasitized by our past experiences and our immediate emotions, while our needs come from our guts.

“The first characteristic of a good decision,” explains Cathy Assenheim is that it meets the deep needs of the individual. Even if a decision also takes into account, but secondly, our personal desires! Satisfying a need brings us substantive resources and positive energy, while conversely, its non-realization creates frustration and costs energy. “

She therefore offers this little exercise: faced with a choice, quickly ask yourself these 2 questions and answer them with a note between 0 and 10:

1. Do I want that right now?
2. Is it right now, I really need that in priority?

“When you ask yourself the question of envy,” she explains, “the brain activates the neural networks associated with instinctive and emotional responses.” When you ask yourself immediately after the question of the need, your brain will be obliged to detach from instinctive responses and focus on a more conscious and rational assessment. ” This little exercise requires a little training, but once it has become automatic, it can really help you classify your different options in order of preference.

2. Follow your values ​​like a compass

For Frédéric Donfk, this compass, these are our values, our raison d’être, our fundamental aspirations. In his book, he invited to personal development work in order to determine them precisely.

“Taking fully aware of your personal values ​​provides a precious way to predict how we will behave in various environments and future situations,” he says. They will provide a prism through which you will examine your decisions. If you stay in accordance with your values ​​and your life mission, the reward system of your brain will be triggered and you will never have to regret a decision, whatever the result. “

3. Get out of “all black or all white”

“A good decision is characterized by its flexibility,” explains Cathy Assenheim. However, when the choices concern changes that can have a more or less important impact on our life or that of our loved ones, stress and pressure are often at their maximum. Think of an operation that I call ‘black/white’. Without wanting, we restrict our decisions to 2 extremes. ” For example, faced with a work that would not satisfy us anymore, the only 2 options would either be to support, or to resign, an alternative capable of creating even more pressure. However, the neuropsychologist invites, on the contrary, to consider all possible options, ‘all the pretty shades of gray’.

So, instead of supporting your current job or resigning, you could look for a new internal position, chat with your manager, take a part -time time and free up time for other activities, consult an orientation advisor, undergo training …

4. Wait for a return to calm

“It is often said that we make decisions with the heart,” says Frédéric Donfk. It’s false. We make decisions with our emotions. ” And the least we can say is that they are not necessarily good advice. Are you sad? You are looking for any way to cheer up your mind, even if it means making a compulsive – and useless purchase! – online. Are you happy? You see the world of optimistic way, ready to take all the risks.

“If you have to reread your life insurance contract, recommends Frédéric Donk, it is better that you are in a bad mood-in which case you will be attentive to the little details-than on a little cloud because you are in love.” Same in case of conflict. “In this situation,” notes Cathy Assenheim, the brain will desperately try to activate as quickly as possible what it knows, namely our usual reaction patterns (attacking the other, close, expressing their emotions …). When they react in urgency, each person has indeed their own automatisms, shaped by their personality and history. “

You will understand: if you have an important decision to make, it is better to wait until you are more serene. Why not calm your nervous system by meditation or breathing exercises, or podcasts?

5. Limit options

Make options of options or determine “for” or “against” are really effective methods, but researchers have shown that the more we multiply the possibilities, the more we become unable to choose.

A study carried out in 2000 invited consumers to taste jams in a department store. While the first group was faced with 24 different kinds of jam, the second was only tested 6. Result: the participants of the second group were 10 times more likely to buy than those of the first. So analyze is good, but you have to know how to stop. It is estimated that beyond 7 options, our brain begins to saturate.

6. The rule of 10-10-10

This is the decision-making method popularized by American journalist Suzy Welch: When you are faced with an important decision, ask yourself the following 3 questions:

• What will be the impact of this decision in 10 minutes?
• What will be the impact of this decision in 10 months?
• What will be the impact of this decision in 10 years?

This will help you align the short and the long term.

7. We make better choices in the morning

Did you know? The quality of our choices decreases during the day. Failure to fatigue, of course. “Researchers have shown,” explains Frédéric Donfk, that when judges are tired and hungry, they have a very strong tendency to choose the (default) option to refuse parole, rather than considering sentences that would offer more elaborate solutions for the inmate. “

On the other hand, we think that on awakening, for ten minutes, our brain would make specific waves likely to make us make more strategic and pragmatic decisions.

8. Decide… not to decide

What if the best option is… not to choose? “We must not always feel guilty because we cannot decide, tempers Cathy Assenheim. It may also be that in the current state of things, you do not have enough information to be able to make a wise choice.”

No miracle recipe

You are ready to make the best choices. But anyway, rest assured: there is no good or bad decision. Each leads to a series of consequences, a life path … It is then up to you to have the resources to adapt or reposition you.

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