It can be intimidating to make big decisions in life when you know they might have lasting consequences. Decisions like where to go to college, or who to marry, or what career to pursue, or where to live, or when to move, or when it\u2019s time to try something new\u2026all those things are big decisions and they can cause us to get anxious and fearful of picking the wrong thing. Whenever I have a big decision to make in my life I have a set of steps that I try to follow to help me to figure out the \u201cright thing to do\u201d. These steps have helped me tremendously in life so I thought I would share them with all of you in hopes that they can be of value to some of you when you are trying to make important decisions in your own lives. I realize that each of us are different and we all have different beliefs, so some of the steps I follow may not be relevant to all of you, but hopefully everyone can glean something that will be helpful to them:<\/p>\n
Step 1.\u00a0 Identify the issue you are trying to make a decision on.<\/p>\n
As part of this process I write down what my options are ahead of me to choose from so I have clarity on what I am trying to figure out.<\/p>\n
Step 2.\u00a0 I always make sure and say a prayer to ask for guidance as I am trying to make my decision.\u00a0 I realize that not everyone believes in prayer, but I personally do, so I always try and pray at the start of trying to make big decisions in my life so I can have help to figure things out.<\/p>\n
Step 3.\u00a0 Study the problem.\u00a0 This step is the one that takes the longest for me.\u00a0 In this step I try to examine all of the facts.\u00a0 What are the pros and cons of each option that I have to consider?\u00a0 What are the concerns I feel about each one of them?\u00a0 What are the benefits that would come with each option?\u00a0 I do as much fact gathering as I can to make sure I am basing my decisions on the best data possible.\u00a0 Part of this step is me seeking advice from those who have experience, those who are smarter than me (and that is a lot of people!), and those who know me best.\u00a0 That is all part of the fact gathering process.<\/p>\n
Step 4.\u00a0 Make a decision. \u00a0After I have studied something as much as I can then its time for me to make a decision.\u00a0 This is always the scary part because we never want to choose the wrong thing.\u00a0 But after all you can do to study something out in your mind then you have to make a choice.\u00a0 Many times in life not making a choice is in essence, making a choice by default, so don\u2019t ever trick yourself into the \u201cwait and see\u201d mode on decisions. Do your best to make a good decision and then make it.<\/p>\n
Step 5.\u00a0 Pray for a confirmation of my decision.\u00a0 Once I make a decision for myself that is based on all of the facts and options I considered I always take it back to prayer to tell God that I have made a decision and to ask him to stop me if I am making the wrong one, because my plan is to move ahead based on what I know and what I have decided.\u00a0 And then I have faith he will stop it from going through if it\u2019s not right for me.\u00a0 I realize other people may approach this step differently, but so far in my life doing it this way seems to work pretty good for me.<\/p>\n
Step 6.\u00a0 Act – DO IT!\u00a0 Once I have decided on something and prayed that God will stop me if I am wrong then it is time to put the decision into action and move forward.\u00a0 Once you decide what is right you cannot let yourself get sucked into second guessing it and worrying. \u00a0If you have done all you can do to make the right choice then you need to have faith that you can move forward doing your best and everything will work out as it should.<\/p>\n
The most important thing is to do what my Grandfather Pearson once advised me to do, \u201cDo something, do anything, just make a start.\u201d<\/p>\n
Have a great day everyone! ~Amy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It can be intimidating to make big decisions in life when you know they might have lasting consequences. Decisions like where to go to college, or who to marry, or what career to pursue, or where to live, or when to move, or when it\u2019s time to try something new\u2026all those things are big decisions […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3847,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[387,2079,5963,7956,7953,599,1145,7962,7965,3464,7955,7963,873,97,5289,547,7961,1514,6172,29,3235,689,3693,231,7959,7952,7966,7954,3076,502,3194,11,2742,256,875,1665,576,3463,6569,7957,7958,7325,7960,1487,938,7964],"class_list":["post-6130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-advice","tag-anxious","tag-approach","tag-big-decision","tag-big-decisions","tag-career","tag-college","tag-concerns","tag-confirmation","tag-cons","tag-consequnce","tag-data-gathering","tag-decision","tag-decisions","tag-do-anything","tag-do-something","tag-examine-the-facts","tag-facts","tag-fearful","tag-god","tag-grandpa-pearson","tag-guidance","tag-helpful","tag-hope","tag-identify","tag-itimidating","tag-just-make-a-start","tag-lasting-consequences","tag-list","tag-live","tag-make-a-decision","tag-marriage","tag-marry","tag-move","tag-options","tag-pray","tag-prayer","tag-pros","tag-right-thing","tag-right-thing-to-do","tag-six-steps","tag-steps","tag-study-the-problem","tag-try-something-new","tag-value","tag-wrong-thing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6130"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6131,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6130\/revisions\/6131"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}