Decisions. We make them every day. We decide what to wear, what to have for breakfast, what to work on next, which route to take to work. And some days we feel we should have decided to not get out of bed. Often, we make decisions without even thinking much. A lot of our decision making is on autopilot. That's not all bad, because, honestly, if we labored over every decision of life we'd never get anything done. Those autopilot decisions are typically guided by our past experiences, as well as our own prejudices (and yes, we all have them), by our preconceived notions about how the world works, and our personal proclivities.

Our decisions, both the autopilot ones as well as the ones we make consciously, guide us through life, and are ultimately the thing that makes us end up where we are. Our "fate," if you will, is not so much something predetermined by outside forces in most cases, but by an accumulation of each tiny decision we make. The fact is, we would almost never imagine the outcome based on each of those individual decisions, but they fit together into the jigsaw puzzle that is our life.

So, it stands to reason, if we make better decisions, we can have a better outcome, a better life. Throughout history philosophers and writers of holy scripture have supported this idea. There is an idea around today that, in order to have our best life we need to follow our heart. But actually, our heart can easily lead us astray. It can be easily deceived, and it is itself a deceiver according to Jeremiah 17:9. That is not to say we should never listen to our heart, but it should never be the sole guide. Listen to the words of the world's wisest man, King Solomon. In Proverbs 23:19 he said, "Hear thou, my son, and be wise, and guide thine heart in the way." But an unguided heart can easily lead us into some wrong and hurtful paths.

In order to get on the better road - to begin making better decisions, we need to work both on the autopilot decisions - sometimes called habits, as well as the conscious ones. There are countless self-improvement gurus out there talking about change and how you can be a different person, the person you would rather be, by changing those unconscious decisions - the little ones made every few seconds. There are important keys to those changes.

4 Easy Steps to Better Decision Making and a Better Life

1. You must begin with a conscious decision to change the unconscious decisions
2. You must commit to a process of change. That is, you can't change everything overnight. Begin with one or two small changes. Commit to them. Work on your new habits daily till they become routine - till they become your new habit. Rinse well and repeat.
3. Prioritize the changes you wish to make. It's OK to get some help here. It may be difficult for you to judge what areas you need to improve first, or most. But be ready to take a little criticism. Remember the words of Solomon again. "Faithful are the wounds of a friend; but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful." (Proverbs 27:6)
4. What happens if you reach a point of failure or seeming impasse? Remember, we said commit to the process. There is only one course of action. Get up, dust yourself off and begin again. That Solomon ... how did he know all this stuff. It's like he had a hot line from God or something, huh? He said, "For a just man falleth seven times, and riseth up again:" (Proverbs 24:16). For those of you with mathematical brains, just think of your failed attempts as the variable X. So the formula for success is easy.
   x + 1.

So, that takes care of one type of decision - the unconscious or autopilot decision. But we also make conscious decisions regularly as well. Or, at least we should be doing so. Leaving the big things in life totally to "fate" - "casting our fate to the wind", well we all know a few people who did that and came out OK or even better than OK, but we unwittingly also know hundreds who did so and, well, their outcome is not so good.

You guessed it. We are going to check in again with Solomon. Proverbs 20:18 says, "Every purpose is established by counsel: and with good advice make war." Now, accept, if you will, that the war you are making is simply living each day. You are waging your own private "War on Poverty". You do want to remember the TMI principle (To Much Information). That is, we don't need to share every intimate detail of our life with everyone around us. But for the big decisions it is wise to get input from others. For some that may be your spouse, your parents, your siblings, a pastor or trusted friend. But sometimes, in fact, much more often than you might think, for both business and personal decisions, you should contact an attorney.

I can hear you ... "yeah, right. Like I can afford an attorney." The fact is, yes, you probably can, if you do it right. No, you don't have to live next to one or play golf with one. People make the mistake everyday of not consulting an attorney on hundreds of things because they are used to the old way of paying for them. But there's a company out there who, for the last 37 years, has been faithfully chipping away, and changing our old paradigms of how we pay for legal services.

What if you could pay for them just like you prepare in life for things like auto accidents, getting sick, or even dying. We are quite used to paying for those things as we go. My goodness, we even pay each month in case we drop our cell phones in a urinal while on an important conference call, right? Well, don't we? Prepaying for legal life events just makes sense, especially when you realize everything this company offers for their very affordable monthly fee. So whether you need help with decisions of life in general, or perhaps you need help making a business decision, having access to wise advice can make all the difference. You know wealthy people use attorneys all the time - not because they are in trouble, but to stay out of trouble and so that they can make wise, well informed decisions. Making good decisions makes good cents. It is amazing how liberating it is when faced with even the smallest of decisions that have any legal or financial ramifications, you can simply pick up the phone and speak to a top attorney in your state (or the state you are having the issue in) without even thinking about a bill.

Start making better decisions right now. Really, this is a no-brainer.

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