The Wise Choice Process

The Wise Choice Process

By doing the wise choice process, I learned that I can use this process with any problem or situation that I may come across with in the future. This process makes decision-making a whole lot easier and effective. It gives me the power to take full responsibility for creating my life the way I want it to be despite any challenges that life presents. Before learning this process I would look at my problems and criticize myself or blame others for causing the problem. But now I only identify the facts of my problems and my feelings towards them. I can’t change the past but I could envision my desired outcome in the future and work towards accomplishing it. After I know what I want my outcome to be I can now create a list of possible choices that I could make. Not only what I could do but also what someone else would have done in my situation. In the past I would usually take the first good choice that came to mind and stuck with it. Now if I don’t have to make a decision right away I would incubate. Then I would come back to my list afterwards with any new ideas that came to mind while I was away. I would go over my list and for each choice I would try to predict the likely outcome. If I don’t know what the outcome would be for any of my choices I would have to stop and gather any additional information I need. Now comes one of the hardest and most important part of this process which is committing to one of my choices. The choice that would give me the best chance of getting my desired outcome. Once I commit to a choice, I would immediately start working on it. Sometime in the future I would evaluate my results by comparing my current situation with the one I envisioned. If it’s almost identical or close enough then my plan was a success. If it’s not then I’ll have to consider another alternative. Look over my list of choices and commit to the next best option. This process would be repeated until I get my desired outcome. In part one of this journal my situation was I had such a busy schedule with work and school that I never manage to have time to exercise in order to maintain a healthy lifestyle. I needed to find a way to get a good workout and still have enough energy throughout the day, so I created my list of possible choices. I then decided that my best option was that I would wake up at 6 a.m. three times a week to run and on Sundays I would take 2 to 3 hours to play a sport. Then I set my date to determine the success of my plan, which was two weeks ahead from the day that I started running. At the end of those two weeks I evaluated my plan. Not only was I able to get a good workout and still have enough energy throughout the day but I was also more alert, more active and I even lost few pounds. I’m really glad I made that choice. Life is a journey with many opportunities and obstacles, and every one requires a choice. Now that I’ve learn to apply the wise choice process I can approach each opportunity with confident and tackle each obstacles knowing that I will get where I want to be. If I can make wiser choices, I can more likely create the future that I want. I will keep in mind a quote that Elaine Maxwell said “My choice; my responsibility; win or lose, only I hold the key to my destiny.”