In my history of decision making, I will share with you one decision which I was very confident as I moved through that decision to its consequences. That decision was my decision to purchase my current car. When I got a new job 7 years ago which required an extensively longer commute, I needed an automobile which had better gas mileage than my then 12 year old full sized pickup truck. I knew that most likely the most fuel efficient automobiles would be in the form of a sedan or smaller car, and my large stature worried me for fitting in a car. After two weeks of exhaustive research, I decided the car I was going to buy was the Hyundai Sonata. It had great head room, and gas mileage meeting my two requirements. The brand had decent ratings as well and I confidently marched to the dealership to purchase my first new car. This has been a decision that has played out very well over the last 7 years. I have had no regrets in my purchase. This led me to make a second confident decision when we purchased my wife's car three years ago. I believe confidence in your decisions helps you feel better about making them, which affects your perception of success as well. As Dr. Shiv points out in his video (2011) it is important though to not blindly make decisions because of your confidence in yourself. Each decision must be approached with the same diligent research.
In a decision which I was not so confident in would be my decision to come back to college. My undergraduate career was somewhat less than stellar, and I honestly doubted my ability to follow through and put in the effort to accomplish my goal of obtaining an advanced degree. When I was accepted to ERAU, I still continued to doubt my ability and my conditional acceptance did not help my feeling of confidence in myself or my choice to go to school. However, what the conditional acceptance did do was issue a challenge. That challenge created an internal conflict of the doubt in my own ability and the desire to prove myself wrong for doubting. With each course, I strive to meet my goal of proving myself wrong for doubting my ability. The problem that I have with my lack of confidence is there is still an internal naysayer continually stating you can not succeed. This same event plays with decisions which are external as well. If you do not enter into them with confidence, those around you will doubt your decision and ability as well.
Overall, our ability to make decisions with confidence needs to be something we focus on with absolute effort. In part of my research for writing this blog entry, I watched a video by researcher named Daniel Goleman where he talked about the need to focus and how training ourselves, and working on those things which we identify as weakness will lead us to future success (Goleman, 2014). I now recognize that my ability to have confidence and portray that confidence to myself and others is a skill which I need to further develop.
References:
Goleman, D. (2013). Focus, The Hidden Driver of Excellence. New York: Harper Collins.
Goleman, D. (2014). Focus, The Hidden Driver of Excellence. Presentation to Talks at Google.
Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9yRmpcXKjY.
Hoch, S.J. & Kunreuther H.C. (2001). Wharton on making decisions. Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley & Sons.
Shiv, B. (2011). Brain research at Stanford: Decision making. Retrieved from YouTube.com: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRKfl4owWKc
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