Start by making smaller decisions more quickly, and without over-analyzing. Pay attention to timeliness: Transfer the behaviors that you use to make timely decisions to areas in which you procrastinate or avoid making decisions. Get past your attitude barriers.
7 Ways to Make Life Changing Decisions
- Realize the Power of Decision Making. Before you start making a decision, you have to understand what a decision does. ...
- Go with Your Gut. ...
- Carry Your Decision Out. ...
- Tell Others About Your Decisions. ...
- Learn from Your Past Decisions. ...
- Maintain a Flexible Approach. ...
- Have Fun Making Decisions.
Sep 3, 2019
Freakonomics
When facing a hard decision, consider choosing change over inaction.
Ecotherapy (also referred to as nature therapy) has been proven to be effective and is used in various practices and cultures around the world—and yet, it is still one of the most under-appreciated forms of therapy. For a period of time, nature therapy was considered a simple practice for those who believe that we are connected to and impacted by the natural environments around us. However, there is now more research to support this ideology. While we stroll around the forest, breathing in the fresh air, airborne chemicals like phytoncides (a chemical many plants give off to fight disease) are also entering our system.
When this happens, the human body responds by increasing the number of natural killer blood cells (a type of white blood cell) which attack virus-infected cells. In one 2009 study, participants spent 3 days/2 nights in a forested area. Their blood and urine were sampled before, during, and after the trip. Natural killer cell activity measured significantly higher during the days spent in the forest and the effect lasted up to 30 days after the trip.
The results of a 10-study analysis proved that both men and women have similar self-esteem improvements after experiencing time spent in nature,
However, this was only true when the command was given by their caregiver, not a stranger. The odds that a teen pooch would repeatedly not respond to a 'sit' command from the caregiver were higher at eight months as compared to five months. However, the response to the 'sit' command improved for a stranger between the five and eight month tests, implying that the adolescent dog simply was choosing not to listen to their owner for the sake of not doing as they were told. The team also found that female dogs who had insecure attachments to their caregivers, which is characterized by high levels of attention seeking and stress when separated from them, were more likely to reach puberty prematurely. Interestingly, the same phenomena has been observed in humans; studies have linked girls' early puberty to insecure attachment.
"This is when dogs are often re-homed because they are no longer a cute little puppy and suddenly, their owners find they are more challenging and they can no longer control them or train them," Asher, a Senior Lecturer in Precision Animal Science, in the University's School of Natural and Environmental Sciences, said in the press release. "But as with human teenage children, owners need to be aware that their dog is going through a phase and it will pass."
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Freakonomics
When facing a hard decision, consider choosing change over inaction.
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‘Freakonomics’ study offers simple strategy for making tough decisions
Ecotherapy (also referred to as nature therapy) has been proven to be effective and is used in various practices and cultures around the world—and yet, it is still one of the most under-appreciated forms of therapy. For a period of time, nature therapy was considered a simple practice for those who believe that we are connected to and impacted by the natural environments around us. However, there is now more research to support this ideology. While we stroll around the forest, breathing in the fresh air, airborne chemicals like phytoncides (a chemical many plants give off to fight disease) are also entering our system.
When this happens, the human body responds by increasing the number of natural killer blood cells (a type of white blood cell) which attack virus-infected cells. In one 2009 study, participants spent 3 days/2 nights in a forested area. Their blood and urine were sampled before, during, and after the trip. Natural killer cell activity measured significantly higher during the days spent in the forest and the effect lasted up to 30 days after the trip.
The results of a 10-study analysis proved that both men and women have similar self-esteem improvements after experiencing time spent in nature,
However, this was only true when the command was given by their caregiver, not a stranger. The odds that a teen pooch would repeatedly not respond to a 'sit' command from the caregiver were higher at eight months as compared to five months. However, the response to the 'sit' command improved for a stranger between the five and eight month tests, implying that the adolescent dog simply was choosing not to listen to their owner for the sake of not doing as they were told. The team also found that female dogs who had insecure attachments to their caregivers, which is characterized by high levels of attention seeking and stress when separated from them, were more likely to reach puberty prematurely. Interestingly, the same phenomena has been observed in humans; studies have linked girls' early puberty to insecure attachment.
"This is when dogs are often re-homed because they are no longer a cute little puppy and suddenly, their owners find they are more challenging and they can no longer control them or train them," Asher, a Senior Lecturer in Precision Animal Science, in the University's School of Natural and Environmental Sciences, said in the press release. "But as with human teenage children, owners need to be aware that their dog is going through a phase and it will pass."
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Freakonomics
When facing a hard decision, consider choosing change over inaction.
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What strategy do you use to make tough life decisions like whether to end a relationship, quit your job, or go back to school? Maybe you weigh the pros and cons. Maybe you go with your gut. Or maybe, if you're like most people, you simply do nothing. After all, we have a cognitive bias that tends to make us prefer the status quo, and focus more on the potential losses involved with change rather than the potential benefits. But here's a simpler strategy: When you're indecisive about a big life decision, choose the path of change.
That's the takeaway of research recently published in the Review of Economics Studies by Steven Levitt, an economist at the University of Chicago and host of the "Freakonomics" podcast. For the study, Levitt asked 20,000 people who were facing tough decisions to flip a digital coin and then report back on how things played out after two and six months. The coin tosses were randomized, with one side representing change, the other status quo. The two-month survey found that participants chose change less frequently than they had initially predicted they would. After six months, however, this bias toward inaction disappeared.
Most surprising were the results on well-being. At both the two and six-month marks, most people who chose change reported feeling happier, better off, and that they had made the correct decision and would make it again. "The data from my experiment suggests we would all be better off if we did more quitting," Levitt said in a press release. "A good rule of thumb in decision making is, whenever you cannot decide what you should do, choose the action that represents a change, rather than continuing the status quo."
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