How to make healthy decisions

To completely engage in healthy decision-making, you have to consider your mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual involvement during the process and in the aftermath of consequences.

Choices made without full comprehension of consequences can involve desperation, impulsiveness, or even ignorance.

Too often, people make irrational decisions that lack reason, understanding, and insight. Through conscious self-awareness and confident utilization of your power of choice, you can learn how to approach each choice with purposeful attention.

By examining your thoughts, feelings, actions, and sense of connection related to decisions, especially major life ones, you can choose wisely and create a more productive life based on those choices:

• Thoughts - When you're about to make a decision, whether small or integral to your life, are you thinking from a place of clarity? Which choice brings you closer to more purposeful living? Are you making decisions without being affected by drugs or alcohol? Are you combining rationality with what feels right? Are you making selfish decisions, or do you think beyond yourself?
• Feelings - Which choice helps you feel better about yourself? Are you choosing from a center of love, revenge, or desperation? Think about how you would feel if you chose one path then another. Choose the path that is healthy and brings you greater joy even if it does not lead to immediate gratification.
• Actions - Are you choosing abruptly to satisfy unmet urges? Why haven't those desires been fulfilled consistently or healthily to begin with? When weighing your options, which paths will lead to good consequences and rewards? Which choices will you likely regret for the actions you took? Are your choices going to produce smart results?
• Connections - Will the choice you make connect you with others soulfully or cause distress? Is your choice from an inner sense of passion, interest, or natural attraction? If the decision you're making is out of convenience, have you considered the overall impact of all people involved? Can you find a solution that is mutually beneficial? Does your intuition guide you one way and your ego guide you another? Will others be able to trust you after your choice is made?

It's not always clear how decisions will turn out, and sometimes experience and hindsight become teachers for your life lessons.

However, you can do your best by being courageously aware of the present moment and choosing purposefully, consciously, and with the highest and best intentions for all involved.

Photo: Morguefile/southernfried

Affirmations: When I make decisions, I calmly return to the present and examine my thoughts, feelings, actions, and sense of purpose related to each possible choice. I choose from a place of peace, love, gratitude, selflessness, and integrity.

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