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Decisions are a vital part of our everyday life. We need to make small or big decisions throughout our lifespans. They can be as simple as what we want to wear today or as complex as with whom we want to get married. No matter what our age is, no matter where we live, with whom we live, and whether we are alone or accompanied, we always are required to make decisions in our lives.

When we were age 4 or 5, we started to learn to make small decisions, and not to forget the significance of those choices at that age. Shall I play with blocks or trains? Shall I scream to show my anger or talk it out? Learning to make small choices at a young age. The human brain develops in a complex, mysterious, and glorious way. It is the most magnificent, splendid beauty in the world. It is said that a human brain’s pre-frontal cortex doesn’t get fully developed by the age of 25. This is the part of our brain, which is responsible for planning, organizing behavior, making decisions, analyzing the consequences, and inhibiting impulses. The human brain works miraculously! Isn’t it?

Whether a 5-year-old kid is thinking about what toy they should play with or what food they should eat, an 18-year-old is thinking about what course stream he should select for his/her college, or a 30-year-old is thinking to change his/her job, we all need to make thousands of decisions every day in our lives. It is estimated that an average adult makes 35,000 decisions each day!!! This number is astounding.

Most of us make our life’s easy or hard decisions based on consequences. There can be positive or negative consequences. Sometimes, we all need to make hard choices in our life. What’s essential is, to make decisions in difficult situations and then accept the consequences. As it’s quoted, “It doesn’t matter which side of the fence you get off on sometimes. What matters most is getting off. You cannot make progress without making decisions.” Jim Rohn

Let us think a little more about the driving factor of making any strong decision.

Driving factor to make decisions:

Let’s take a simple example here. Suppose I need to decide what I want to drink, “Tea or Coffee?” My solution would depend upon answers to this set of questions: “What my mood is?” “Am I with someone else, if yes what does he/she would like to have?”, “What’s the weather?”, “Is this nighttime or daytime?”, “Is it raining?”, “Am I feeling tired?”, “Am I feeling cold?”, Or it could just be the completely random pick, tea/coffee, it doesn’t matter. This is just an example. It depends on person to person. Different people think differently. Someone can have a totally different set of questions in their mind. Few won’t even think and just pick straight coffee or tea. All I want to say is that our mind is accustomed to dealing with such day-to-day simple routine scenarios. It quickly sorts out these problems by taking sensory inputs from our surroundings and making decisions for us swiftly.

There is another category of decisions: Strong decisions/hard choices. Let’s take an example of that category here. Suppose I need to decide “Where do I want to settle down?” What could be the driving factor to making strong choices? For me the most important driving factor is consequences. I cannot randomly pack my bag, pick up a place, and settle down there, no. To make that strong decision, I would need to have a strategic plan. I would need information and analyze all the possible consequences. There could be positive/negative consequences associated with the place where I would want to move in and with the place where I am already settled in. There could be some risks associated with living conditions, and some challenges in the work cultures of both places. After I analyze all the risks involved, I might want to analyze my alternatives. I would want to compare all the alternatives. At last, once I know what is best for me, I would act! It is possible that the outcome of my decision might not be the same as I thought and decided it would have been. Sometimes good decisions can have bad outcomes. But I would be prepared for the consequences! I had thoroughly analyzed it and then had taken my decision. So, just because the outcome was not exactly the same, as I was expecting, doesn’t mean my decision was bad, correct😊

Shifting our focus to my earlier remark where I mentioned that the human brain’s pre-frontal cortex, which is a significant part of decision-making, gets fully developed by the age of 25. After understanding this concept, it feels so natural that our kids and teens don’t make decisions the way we adults make. Then how can we help our kids become independent and confident decision-makers? I think by giving them choices at a young age, creates a foundation for making decisions. It also teaches them to deal with the consequences of their decisions at a very low level. For example: giving them a choice between a banana and an apple. If they pick an apple, they won’t get a banana and if they pick a banana, they won’t get an apple. These kinds of small choices help build confidence, and independence, dealing with the consequences at a young age. As kids grow, the freedom of choice would surely increase but wherever safety is involved, surely parents’ input should be needed.

We all make wrong decisions in our lives, and our kids would make them too. They need to keep making independent decisions in their lives as they grow, rather than getting discouraged after one or two failed decisions. We would need to give them more opportunities. We would need to keep believing in them and showing confidence in them. Always make them feel safe and show them how much we care and how much we love them unconditionally. As a parent, we have our life experiences. Since our brain is fully developed, we can see long-term consequences, but our kids and teens might not. They might ignore those consequences while making their decisions. Most importantly, they should always have trust in us that no matter how big the problem is, they can come to us fearlessly to share, and they will find their solution. After all, what are family for😊

Thanks

Mridulika