Try a guided meditation app, such as Relax, or attend a local mindfulness class to reduce your stress level. Focus on breathing deeply in a calm place removed from your phone and other intrusions. Sometimes the largeness of a decision can be intimidating. Meditation can help you get in touch with your true feelings and reduce anxiety around making a decision.
Try to consciously set aside the thoughts of others as you ponder your decision. For example, if your best friend loves Italian culture, studying abroad in Italy rather than France may be a no brainer for her. That said, it doesn’t mean the same choice would be right for you.
Avoid beating yourself up about having to pass over 1 option. Big decisions can be hard, and ultimately, it likely won’t help you feel at peace with your choice.
Often just the process of making a pros and cons list can help you gain clarity about your feelings. You may find yourself consciously adding more pros to 1 choice so you can pick that option. Rather than seeing this as a negative, view this personal bias as great. It helps you understand that you feel more strongly about 1 choice. Try weighting each item with a number to show how positive or negative the trait is. A really favorable trait might give 5 points to the pro list and a slightly negative trait might give 1 point to the con list. Subtract the number of cons from the total pros. Whichever choice has a higher number may be the right decision.
Consider any opportunities that might close to you if you went with 1 choice. For example, if you live in Iowa and are considering moving to Rome, getting in-state tuition at your local university may no longer be an option for you if you move abroad.
The 2 choices may share some benefits. By performing this exercise, you can decide which choice you feel will help you accomplish certain goals or hopes more. For example, let’s say you’re choosing between 2 vacation destinations. Both might be “bucket list” spots. You’d write “bucket list” on your pros vs. pros list. Going through the list quickly though, you may find that 1 destination feels more like a must-do life experience than the other. Furthermore, you can simply determine how you felt when you were first faced with the decision. If you immediately favored 1 side over the other, perhaps that’s the right decision for you.
These websites are a great way to gain clarity about a product as you can prioritize the most important aspects your decision. For example, if you are trying to choose between 2 car seats for a baby and safety is your biggest priority, you can make an informed decision based on objective research using this method.
For example, you might feel you need to choose between taking violin lessons or joining a soccer league, when actually your schedule might be able to accommodate both activities on different days of the week.
You might say, “I’m really struggling about whether I should choose the job in Tulsa or Boston. Knowing what you know about my personality and career goals, which do you think would be the best fit for me?” It can be helpful to hear someone you love confirm a choice you suspected all along.
While this may seem arbitrary, if you’re really stuck, an exercise like this can help you move past a difficult decision. If your heart drops when the coin lands, that may be an indication that you should make the other choice.
For example, while you may want to get a dog, breaking your lease to move to a dog-friendly apartment may involve a lot of stress and financial sacrifice. Consider the worst-case scenario with each decision. If you’re choosing between buying a car and buying a motorcycle, you might consider that a car might be safer if you get into an accident.
