So much of creating a good life comes from making better choices. When you think of it, everything we have in life comes from the choices that we've made. Whether they're conscious and deliberate or made by default, they're all our choices.
If we make the wrong choices, or fail to make the right ones, these choices can have an enormous, even catastrophic impact on the course of our life.
Sometimes, our choices have unforeseen consequences, but often, we can anticipate the outcome of a particular choice and stop, rethink it, and make a better choice before we get ourselves into trouble.
Being human means being imperfect. We spend our lives making big and small mistakes and hopefully learning how to do things better than we did before.
Sometimes, it can be hard to change. We may lack the necessary tools to help us understand our motivations and improve our decision-making process.
There are six helpful tools that I would recommend for anyone who wants to make better choices and live a better life.
Tool #1: Think it through. Very rarely will we encounter an emergency in which we must act immediately, without having to consider the repercussions of our actions. Most often, we have enough time to think things through to their logical conclusions. Doing this will always help us to make better choices.
Tool #2: Tune in to what you really want and need. When we don't really know what we want, it will be impossible to make the right choices for ourselves. Taking the time to get in touch with our authentic needs will always prevent us from making the wrong choices for ourselves.
Tool #3: Let your best self do the choosing. Within every one of us there's an impulsive, irrational inner child, a self-negating, self-doubting inner critic and a logical, practical adult self. It's clear that the adult self has to do the choosing if we want a good outcome from the choices we're making.
Tool #4: Go after what you want vs. avoiding what you fear. We tend to create what we focus on. When our choices are based on trying to avoid something we fear, for example, failure, rejection or criticism, things tend to backfire on us. If, on the other hand, we pursue what we really want, for example, health, happiness and fulfillment, we're much more likely to achieve success.
Tool #5: Put passion ahead of obligation. Too many people are driven by obligation, duty or toxic guilt, but these motivations rarely bring us what's best for us. We must tune in to our heart's desires and let them guide our choices, if we want to live our best life.
Tool #6: Make your choices count. We're always choosing, whether we're doing so consciously and deliberately or unconsciously and by default. If we want to make the right choices, we must take responsibility for ourselves and actively choose, as opposed to allowing our choices to just happen.
I've found that when we use these six tools, they always help us to make better choices. I hope that these tools can help you to make the best choices for your life.
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