Decision-making is an essential part of our lives. The decisions we make affect our lives. Some people aren't taught decision-making techniques so they end up making mistakes.
The Four-Step Natural Brilliance Model
In his book, “Natural Brilliance”, Paul R. Scheele–founder of “Learning Strategies Corporation”–describes a four-step model for making decisions. The four-step model is as follows: Release, Notice, Respond, and Witness.
1. Release. Drain all stress from your body and mind. A relaxed body and mind promotes the optimal state for analyzing any situation; a state of relaxed awareness. Being stressed and tense makes us narrow our focus and therefore reduces the number of options we can come up with to solve the problem or make a decision.
2. Notice. Become aware of what is going on around you and within you. By combining steps one and two, release and notice, you achieve a state of relaxed alertness. With relaxed alertness you increase the amount of information that you have about the situation and are better able to come up with a rich set of options to choose from.
3. Respond. Take action. Anything that you do will have an effect, which means that by acting you’ll have more feedback with which to work. By acting you will either have more information on what works, or you’ll have more information on what doesn’t work. In either case, movement will provide you with real and immediate feedback.
4. Witness. Pretend to sit across from yourself and take on the perspective of a wise and trusted counselor. Have a conversation with yourself about the results that you got when you acted. Decide how to best work with the feedback you received from your action so that you can modify your response and act once again. Continue following these four steps until you reach the desired outcome.
Make sure that your life moves forward in the direction that you want it to by making better decisions. The method described above is a great place to start.
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