Go with your gut.

When faced with a tough choices how do you progress and finally make a decision? Some decisions are simple to analyze while others create stress and agony for us while we ponder “what to do.”

There are books about making decisions in an instant, and when pushed into a tough spot most people go with their gut feeling.

Most of the time they’re right.

I’m a huge fan of the quiz-show Jeopardy. Often I’ll be watching - playing along at home - and when an “answer” is revealed I’ll blurt out a “question” (usually the first thing that comes to mind). Often I’ll think to myself, “No, that can’t be right…” and I’ll change my answer before the correct “question” is revealed.

Almost every time I revise my “question” to the “answer” I find I’m wrong. When I trust my gut and go with the first thing my brain called up I find I have a much higher occurrence of being correct.

I’m not right 100% of the time, no one is, but by making a snap decision - and trusting my gut and years of reading trivia to allow my brain to instantly call up the right “question” - I find that I’m right often enough to amaze my wife with the number of “answers” I “question” correctly.

If you’re the kind of person who loves (or hates) to agonize over a decision, researching and endless thinking about options and outcomes, you’ll spend a lot of time deciding and not much time acting. And it’s often the action that makes us successful in our ventures.

I have a friend who never seems to plan things out much, he really flies by the seat of his pants. He trusts his gut and is quick to make a decision - faster than just about anyone else I know. For all of his quick decision making and lack of planning and analyzing he’s remarkably successful.

He’s not successful because he’s only making the right decisions, he’s successful because he’s making a ton of decisions and quickly moving past the bad decisions. What he lacks in detailed planning he makes up for in sheer, massive action!

If you’re not making “gut” decisions because the very idea sounds intimidating the good news is that quick, “gut” decisions can be learned. I used to agonize over restaurant menus; I never knew what I wanted, I would waffle back and forth between several items and I always had to tell the server that I needed another few minutes.

One day I read a book on achievement and it said that Major League baseball hall of fame hitters only connect 3 out of every 10 times they’re at bat and that’s enough to put them in the hall of fame. They make snap decisions on when to swing and they recover quickly from their mistakes. That really sunk in with me - I needed to learn to make quicker decisions. So I started at restaurants.

The next time my wife and I were at a restaurant I started my learning process. I didn’t open the menu and I didn’t think about the options available to me. When the waiter came up to take our order I asked, “What sounds good to you tonight?” They were a little surprised and then said they were planning on getting the salmon. I said, “Gee, that does sound good. I’ll take that.” I didn’t really think it sounded good - I’m more of a steak man myself - but I wanted to force myself to make quick decisions.

It turns out that it was indeed a good meal. I’ve ordered it several times since and it’s one of my non-beef favorites.

So I slowly started making quick decisions at restaurants - trusting my gut and usually walking away full and happy. Slowly I noticed that I started feeling okay while making quick decisions on other, smaller aspects of my life; next came my career and work life and then those small decisions became a little bigger and a little bigger.

Now I feel comfortable trusting my gut in many situations. I’m not crazy - if I think a decision will significantly impact my life I will give it the time and research it’s due to make sure it’s a good decision. But for everything else I try to just reach down inside, do a gut check, and make a decision trusting that I’ll be right more often than I’ll be wrong.

Here are some additional tips to help you ease into trusting your gut when you make decisions. You don’t need to write pages and pages of detail, just enough so you can review your notes later - when you’re distanced from the decision - and see what the results were:

* When you are faced with a decision write down what you’re thinking and feeling. Be as objective as possible!

* Write down the pros of making the decision.

* Write down the cons of not making the decision.

* Write down how you will feel if you make the decision, and what you believe the impact on your life or career will be.

* Write down how you will feel if you don’t make the decision, and what you believe the impact on your life or career will be.

* Write down your “gut” decision.

* Write down your “analyzed” decision.

* Write down the decision you actually make.

After sufficient time has passed - maybe weeks, maybe months - and you’re feeling like you’re reasonable distanced from the decision pull out your notes and review them.

What was the outcome of your decision? How did it ultimately impact your life? Was your “gut” decision right - or if you didn’t make the gut decision do you believe it would have been the better decision?

Hopefully you’ll see that more often than not you’re gut feeling is correct when making a decision. You just have to learn to trust yourself and your abilities; and you have to learn that it’s okay to make decisions quickly because that gives you more chances to put action into your life.

When you have a lot of action you’ll find you make a lot more progress and achieve a lot more than you thought possible!

2 comments January 17th, 2006