Decisions get made every single day. You may not realize just how many but there may be thousands of decisions people process through about life, family, work, recovery, and other things like what to eat for lunch. Making better decisions is less about what you think about and more how you think about it and process next steps in a more effective way. Learning how to move away from irrational choices to better ways of thinking can help create a better way of life in the future.
Mental Shortcuts
Thinking through every scenario in every decision is a pain and maybe not even feasible. Mental rules-of-thumb allow people to make judgments quickly and accurately, while also leading to fuzzy thinking and poor decisions. A sneaky mental shortcut known as anchoring bias has people use an initial starting point as an anchor, then adjust it to yield a final estimate or value. To minimize potential negative impact of this, it helps to be aware of how they operate and develop. Look at what is reasonable to do for this moment regarding this decision and go from there.
Poor Comparison
When you are working on making better decisions, it helps to look at what is a good thing and what is negative. The comparison effect is about knowing what is a good choice versus a negative one. People assign values based on how one thing compares with other things. Take, for instance, whether to buy a certain brand of milk for one price while weighing options on another type of milk that is more expensive. The goal is to work on making better comparisons because it supports making more rapid decisions efficiently and thinking through logically rather than relying on immediate ‘gut reaction,’ and feelings.
Overly Optimistic
People are born with this natural proclivity towards optimism that hampers good decision-making skills. When people are told the risk of something bad happening is lower than anticipated, they tend to adjust predictions based on the information they learned. When the risk is higher than estimated, they tend to ignore the information. Some of the optimism comes from a tendency to believe bad things happen to other people, but not us. When something unpleasant happens, we think to find things they may have done that caused the issue. This tendency to blame victims protects us from having to admit we ourselves are vulnerable to trauma and painful life events. When it comes to making decisions, we might be overly optimistic but we are more likely to believe our decisions are best. Experts might warn about what is harmful but our optimism can be a downfall unless we focus on making wise, healthy decisions which comes from practice and time.
Oceanfront is here to help you make the right decision by attending rehab. Whether it is the first time or a subsequent visit to rehab, we believe in the power of recovery to transform lives with hope and healing. We are founded on the principle of providing the best in care and services at affordable prices. We are located in beautiful Laguna Beach. Call us to find out how we can help you navigate addiction recovery: 877-279-1777
