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January 11, 2015
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Decision making is not always easy. However, if you are wondering how to make the best decision for yourself, mindfulness is worthy of exploration. Mindful decision making is the practice of becoming more aware of the factors that impact the choices we make. Since we often make decisions based on habits, mindfulness can help us to pause, reflect, and contemplate wisely before jumping to our usual response.

How to Make the Best Decision for Yourself

This mindfulness worksheet on decision making is one way of assessing how and why we make decisions. It is something we can use after a decision has been made.

Yet how might we make the best decision for ourselves in the moment when it is required? While there is no right or wrong way to make our final choice, the following mindfulness practices can help us to quiet the mind and become more balanced in our thought processes:

  • Deep belly breathing to ease stress and calm the mind
  • Body awareness to help ourselves assess how different decisions resonate with us on a physical level
  • Taking pause before jumping to an assumption or decision
  • Being aware of our own biases and the data we might be ignoring
  • Sharing our difficulties in making a particular decision with a loved one

These won’t necessarily lead us immediately to the best answer for ourselves; sometimes it takes time for decisions to come to us. However, these simple practices can help us to broaden our perspective and ease the racing mind that can’t decide.

Mindfulness Exercises for Decision Making

Mindful decision making might be made a bit easier as we explore various perspectives and practices that can facilitate this process. For additional mindfulness exercises to help make decision making easier, you might consider:

About the author 

Sean Fargo

Sean Fargo is the Founder of Mindfulness Exercises, a former Buddhist monk of 2 years, a trainer for the mindfulness program born at Google, an Integral Coach from New Ventures West, and an international mindfulness teacher trainer. He can be reached at [email protected]

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