Tag / Decision-making

by Michael

Better Decisions, pt. 4 of 4

Last, but just as valuable as the first, is my fourth piece to better decisions.

Wait. 

You don’t need to move as quickly as you think you do.  Exercise your smart muscles until good choices become your reflex.  Until that’s been discerned about you, slow down.  Until you’ve made mistakes and carried the scars to show it, pause.  Instead of going at it alone, ask for help.  Nobody says you have to good at making decisions yourself.  You can use people for their wisdom. 

Until somebody you trust tells you that you’re good to go, that you’re growing in wisdom, that you’re getting better, wait.  That means you’ve got to loosen the grip on your pride.  You’ve got to give somebody else the right to tell you what to do.  You’ve got to listen and put someone else’s view close enough to first place for a while, if not in first place altogether.

This pushes you toward others.  This act pulls you away from yourself.  It’s not inherently bad.  It doesn’t mean you can’t be independent.  It isn’t a slap against your brain or your wit or your ingenuity.  It’s a reminder–as smart and witty as you may be–that you are not alone. 

I know people who hate waiting.  But waiting to make a decision doesn’t mean waiting for every other thing.  Do something else while you wait.  Work on some other area.  Pay attention to something else.  It’ll make it easier.  Still, at the end of the day, to wait means to wait.  If the world won’t end without you making the choice, pause long enough to hear wisdom.  To hear it in the form of that tiny still voice.  To hear in the words you read from writings you call sacred.  Eavesdrop of other people’s conversations and see if there’s something in it for you.

That’s enough.  I could add twelve more pieces to this.  But you’d stop reading my blog.  Until I made better decisions about posts.

What would you add to these puzzle pieces?  How have you benefited from waiting to make an important decision?  What has the fruit of waiting been, a better outcome, something unexpected, nothing at all?

by Michael

Better Decision, pt. 3 of 4

The third post toward making better, stronger decisions is here.  Without pause, my third nudge has to do with feelings.

Feel the consequences before you choose them. 

It’s extremely helpful to pay attention to your gut, to the seat of your emotions.  Some people resonate with the language of the heart.  So, whether you call it your gut, your heart, or your feelings, the idea is that you connect with them. 

How does it feel for you to get option A?  Does option B make your stomach turn?  This part of choosing isn’t on the analytical side.  It’s framed by the analytical side and might be inseparable from it, but it moves downward.  Maybe the decision is completely out of your head and down in your feet.

I realize that this is almost entirely hypothetical.  It may be next to impossible.  But you may be surprised.  If you dig or sit down long enough, maybe your feelings will expose themselves.  Would choosing one way make you feel worse or better?  Can those feelings be a part of the tools that help you make a better, wiser decision? 

I’ve noticed that my feelings sit in my stomach.  When I’m stressed or angry or agitated, my stomach lets me know.  I may lose my appetite.  I may increase my appetite.  I may eat and not notice taste.  I may feel flipping and hear rumbling more than normal.  I may feel what my acupuncturist calls heat when my energy gets confused and doesn’t know how to fall down and, instead, moves upward.  But my stomach speaks and my job is to feel and to listen.

Maybe that is feeling the first response you had when you considered your options.  The nagging feeling that sunk your spirit.  The headache flashing when you spent five minutes writing pros and cons.  Joy rising up as you talked to a friend about some goal you set.  Exhaustion coming from nowhere other than looking at that one route you could take.  Excitement when you heard about a particular alternative that you hadn’t thought of.

My spiritual director told me once that our series of conversations was about feeling more and not less.  Think about that.  If you saw your life as an opportunity to feel more, not less.  If you saw your decisions as opportunities to feel more and not less.  Maybe they would help you choose or refrain from choosing.  Maybe you would recognize feelings as a gift and not as irritants.  Maybe they could be tools and keys and tiny maps for you as you considered the choices before you. 

So, if you were to feel your decisions; if you were to experience some part of the consequences to your decisions; if you were to let yourself sense or hear what would happen, how might that enable you to choose?

by Michael

Better Decisions, pt. 2 of 4

I started thinking about making decisions.  Part of this thought hangs over from my interview with the Alvarados.  Part of this is about some of the things I’m mulling over and embracing as I continue to think hard about telling people what to do at NC3.  Uh, that’s a joke. 

Anyway.  The second piece to my four-piece puzzle, which when done will form a beautiful set of better decisions is…

Consider your steps. 

Think about your options, what you’ll do and how your actions impact the closest people related to your decision. 

First, think about what you will do.  I am not a quick decision-maker in general.  I’m the type who sits with things, turns them over, looks and looks again.  But I make a handful of decisions spontaneously.  In order to make those choices quickly, those I need to make, I spend a lot of time developing my mental muscles.  One of my mentors said to me once that he studies to be ready and not to get ready.  He works in a way that makes teaching, preaching, or choosing easier because of the person he’s become.  He considers things in order to stay ready for whatever.   

In seminary students are presented with case studies.  In counseling programs students clock clinical hours and are supervised.  Chaplains take rigorous notes, discuss verbatim what was said in exchanges with patients.  All of those moments and interchanges enable a person to store up decisions which form him or her as a decision-maker.  When things come up, you are formed enough by previous experience to choose.  You’ve considered things enough until choosing well becomes your first option.

Next, say this to yourself, “If I do this, then it will do that to such and such.”  That fill-in-the-blank exercise may just make the decision for you.  This is an exercise in seeing others as valuable and as related what you do.  This may be discipline, seeing your life as connected to others, but it’s a good one.  What you do matters to people. 

If you moved to another city, what would it mean to your friendships?  If you added a second job to your load, how would you daughter respond after three months?  If you sent the email as you wrote it–instead of writing it and then deleting it–what would result in your relationship to the recipient?  Perhaps the answers to those questions, the results, is, in fact, the answer.

What do you think?

by Michael

Better Decisions, pt. 1 of 4

Every decision you make provides a view into your head.  When you make a decision, you are making a statement about the way you think, about what you value, and about what you’re looking forward to.  I’ve been thinking about the courage it takes to make hard choices.  Part of this is coming from my thoughts as a sermon-preparer and giver.  I’m preaching more regularly than I ever have and it’s both rigorous for my weekly calendar and for my soul. 

I have a list of things in my red journal that I want to be different about me because I’m speaking to a congregation who is listening and looking for my own life to be changed.  I think it makes a difference preparing messages with that in my mind–that “these people expect me to live up to my words,” words which in the case of the Bronzeville congregation, because we’re wading through Matthew, are largely the words of Jesus.  Following Jesus or being a Christian, if you will, is a series of daily decisions about whether I will follow while choosing what I’ll think and do in response to that Man.

That said, here is my first offering of a few things to consider as you make better decisions.

Draw wise people around you. 

Resist the need or the urge or the temptation to make major decisions alone.  Whether you started doing it when you were younger or whether you were convinced later on that smart people made their own decisions.  A mark of wisdom is the inclusion of others in your life, in general, and in your decisions, in particular.

I learned about a clearness committee while in grad school at Wheaton.  Scottie May has us reading Palmer.  The clearness committee is a concept that I’ve implemented at various points in my life.  The last two times was when my wife was deciding to leave one place of employment and when I was also discerning (at a different time) to leave my first church, Sweet Holy Spirit, to come to New Community and serve.  At both times, the good people who sat with us ask great questions and some things came out that I still remember.

Parker Palmer writes about the committee, which comes out of the Quaker tradition.  It’s kinda like a roundtable or a panel or a small group of people.  The group is made up from people you trust, people you invite, to help you make a decision.  You invite them to a table somewhere, give them some background for the choice before, open yourself for their questions, and you listen to yourself while you answer.  That’s it.  You hear what they have to say while questioning.  You can only answer their questions, nothing else.  You don’t tell them what you want necessarily.  You simply hear what wisdom comes from them and from what they wish to ask.

The assumption behind this invitation to the table is that great wisdom 1) comes from you and 2) comes after the good and sometimes intense questions that a community of people level at you.  You come to clarity, to clearness, to insight when you hear yourself, when you hear the insights of others.

Questions for you: What types of decisions have you asked others to help you with?  How have you found a community, friends, or relatives helpful as you’ve made choices?