We’re all humans, which means we’re not immune from making bad decisions every once in a while. Although we can’t go back in time and change our choice, we can lessen the impact it has on us. Below, you’ll find seven actionable tips for surviving a poor decision.
Accept your emotions
- Focus on how you feel, and recognize what happened and how you felt.
- If you cut yourself, deal with it, seek professional help, and journal, talk to a confidante, or seek help from therapy, do whatever helps you work through your feelings.
Forgive yourself
- Use the failure of your bad decision as leverage for future success
- Mistakes are essential for success. You will make them, but what determines your future success is how you respond
- We spend way too much energy wallowing in guilt rather than using that to go to our next move
Accept your regret and practice gratitude
- After making a bad judgment call, your mind will likely be flooded with regret. Rely on regret as a powerful tool to remember things you want to avoid in life and to help you make better decisions in the future
- Make a list of three or five things you’re grateful for each morning. This will help lessen the grip the regret has on you.
Focus on the cold, hard facts
- What is currently happening? What do you really want? How can you work productively toward that goal given the situation you’re in?”
- You might struggle to be objective. Benjamin Ritter, Ed.D., founder of LFY Consulting, says one of the best things you can do is focus on the facts.
Create a decision-making process for the future
- Ana Jovanovic, a psychologist and life coach at Parenting Pod, says everyone should have a process in place for complex decisions
- Identify the decision/problem
- Collect information
- Consider various solutions
- Make your decision
- Take action on that decision
Don’t let the bad decision consume you
- Tristan Gutner, a life and business coach, says it is important to mentally separate yourself from the decision. Doing so can help you strip it of its power.
- We need to decide, right when the mistake happens, that we’re going to learn from it and use it as a momentum-builder to move forward.
