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Every day we are faced with choices. Some are small like what to eat for dinner or what flight to book. Others are bigger and deal with job opportunities, a choice in education or relationships.
A couple of years ago I was faced with a big career decision in life. I wrote down all the pluses and the minuses of the opportunity but it didn’t help me in making my decision. I learned a technique on how to make a choice and over the years I’ve refined it. In this article I am sharing it with you as it helped me so much.
Start by writing down your choice. It can be “Should I accept this job opportunity overseas?“ or “Is this the right (business) partner?”
The next part consists of taking a piece of paper and drawing 5 columns. You can download a FREE template here.
In the first column “personal life” write down what is important to you. This can be your health, where you want to live or what do you like to do as a hobby. Everything what you enjoy doing in your personal life.
In the column “career” you write down what kind of work you like doing. Or write down what you would like to do in the (near and far) future. Do you want to become the VP of a large company or do you aspire to help as many people as possible as a specialized health practitioner?
The next column is about relationships. This is your personal relationship but also the relationships within your family, the group of people you work with or the boss you work for. Write down what kind of relationship you want to have with those people. Should they be directive, nurturing, encouraging or should they help you make a step forward in life? You also might want to write down about other goals, needs or aspirations you have you have for your relationships. Are they there to give you security and joy or should they teach you something?
In the column “development”, you write down how you want to develop yourself. What skills would you like to acquire or what would you like to learn? Are there some courses you really want to follow? This can range from a whole curriculum to a course on how to learn to type blind or to give better presentations.
The last item is called “miscellaneous” but can be any other aspirations in your life. This can vary from what contribution you want to make, your financial aspirations to what spiritual goals you have. Examples are being able to understand life better, experiencing more abundance, becoming a lover of life or to be able to live in the here and now (becoming mindful).
Finally, go back to your choice and review all that what you’ve written in the different columns. Is your answer in line with what you want in your personal life, your career, your relationships, within personal development or other aspirations in life? In all, you’re making a choice in line with yourself.
The best part is that is that in the end it doesn’t matter what you choose, as long as you make a decision and move forward. By moving forward, you’ll gain momentum which makes it easier to change course, if necessary.
Use your work document for your choices and to help you that they are in line with YOU. Periodically you might want to update it when new goals and aspirations arise or when others are no longer relevant. You can get a new FREE template here.
How do you make choices? What is your favorite technique or do you follow your gut feeling (intuition)?
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