Doubt exists, for me, in every aspect of a decision. Doubt of the options available to me, doubt about the selection of an option, doubt about my understanding of the consequences, doubt about my understanding of the choice to be made by me.

Of course, we make decisions on a day to day basis but I mean doubt in life-altering decisions that carry magnitude, like whether to change jobs, whether to make an investment, whether to pursue a goal over the cost of other goals, whether to move overseas or stay, whether to do a Masters degree or continue working, whether to break-up/divorce or continue in the relationship etc. There are decisions made between two good things or one good vs one great thing. There are also decisions which we make daily that re-affirm the life we live and if there is to be made any progress, those decisions require crucial consideration: am I making this decision now by voluntary choice or am I making this decision only because I have been making the same decision in the past (a habit of making this decision). In a Joe Dispenza way, such decisions go to the self-identity and progress requires making different choices that go to a different self-identity. If the decision relates to an addiction or satisfaction of a craving, then shifting any self-identity will invariably bring up a lot of doubt about the choice to change – your own body will try to get you back to what you were.

For many, doubt may seem a ridiculous idea. I know several people who effortlessly take action which suggests to me that they either never considered the thing through enough to give rise to doubt or that they did the action despite the doubt. Frankly, it is often the former. You can tell when a decision has been made hastily and without any second order thinking.

But, because a decision has been made, the world progresses forward. Suddenly, there are new problems to be dealt with and new path show themselves. The same hasty decision has now opened up a new future filled with its own distinct problems. On a quantum understanding of the world, the world comes to exist only through action and such choices, i.e. that the future is created through such choices. Even if the action was wrong, it is often that the consequences are reversible.

In contrast, if no decision is taken, the choice and the circumstances remain the same and then there is an endless loop of considering the same situation again and again. I am often reminded about the parable of the philospher who dies of thirst because he cannot choose whether he should drink from the pond on the right or the pond in the left.

If I am lucky, the time comes when I am forced to make a decision. But in such a circumstance, I often reflect on Alan Watts’ observation that, despite all the thinking prior to the decision, the decision made at the time you are forced is a decison made on instinct anyways (like all thinking really is).

Where a decision is not made hastily, I commend people who can weigh up the risk of the situation (risk of not making a decision, risk of option A, risk of option B etc) and sufficiently satisfy themselves about a choice to follow through with the choice quickly. Quick decision making and follow through is a commendable skill. I can only imagine that it requires a sense of courage (the confidence in the ability to withstand whatever the consequences may be) and a sense of mental control (the ability to stop your mind from ruminating on doubt about the choice). I would also imagine that it requires a sense of self-assuredness (the ability to trust your instinct in making the choice) and the ability to discern impulse from logic (am I making a choice because of certain negative habits or cravings or is this the right decision).

The opposite of doubt is clarity. Clarity is a great and superior feeling. It is also the subject of a lot of my thoughts – how do I achieve clarity and what does clarity look like for me. In any teaching about achievement or manifestation, clarity is the first step. You cannot proceed to achievement till you have “clarity of the feeling that you want to achieve” or “clarity of intent” or “clarity of the goals”. And so I often find that I cannot even pursue a goal properly because I dont have this first step. Doubt often seeps itself in ways like “do you really want this” or “why would you want that”.

The funny thing is realising the impact of meditation on doubt. Through meditation, I can more clearly see my impulses and desires which impact choices. As a result, I can often place a distance between me and the feelings or logic that may lead one to make certain choices. This is all well and good when it relates to negative choices but the same impact applies to positive choices. For example, I had such a difficult time in making the choice to workout and eat better when I realised my body was looking worse than it should because every attempt to change was presented with questioning like “Can you not see through the desire to look better? Can you not realise that you only want to look better for selfish reasons? How can you call yourself spiritually aligned when you are acting on base desires to look good”. So, in fact, meditation and too much ‘seeing-through’ thoughts actually made it extremely difficult for me to follow through with choices since following my desires appeared to contradict my self belief as spiritually aligned “higher being”. Making decisions became a chore because any progress in my life felt “materialistic” and yucky.

There is something to be said about the interplay of desire and meditation and the paradox that, even though most meditation (at least in the Buddhist traditions) require you to see through the desire, there are still some desires that you must act on as part of the human experience. There is no perfect science of ‘good desire’ and ‘bad desire’. My experience so far is that I cannot create a system to categorise certain desires as worth pursuing and others that are not. Each desire I have to look at again and again and I found that no matter how much ‘seeing through’ I did, there were certain desires that kept calling me to action and my failure to act was causing me more suffering.

So in circumstances where you cant just think away your desires, how does one achieve clarity in decision making? I set out below some observations in relation to this that I have found from my experience.

1. Writing as thinking – It is essential to write down your thoughts when making a crucial decision. Writing is not merely a tool to record the thoughts but also to develop them. Writing helps you see the flaws in your thinking, discern the crucial points from the barrage of thoughts flowing in your head, and focus the mind on the question. Another crucial benefit of thinking is to be able see your thinking at a later time. It may be that the answer seems clear at one point, but in a weeks time, that clarity has been replaced by doubts (perhaps because the consequences are different than thought, feelings have changed, circumstances have changed). Seeing the thinking on paper helps remind me how I got to my decision and helps put me back in place as to why the decision was necessary based on the calculations done before. If the circumstances have changed, do they go to the reasons of making the decision? Do they support the decision now or not? If feelings have changed, is that enough of a reason to change the logical thinking underpinning the decision or can you withstand the flow of emotions to avoid acting impulsively because the decision is rational? There are variety of ways of thinking by writing – pros and cons list (I am reminded every time of the Friends episode about Ross’ pros and cons list – if you are going to make one about a person, keep it secret!), Eisenhower matrix, mind maps, flow charts, using index cards for seperate ideas, drawing scenarios, writing random notes, ‘starting from the end’ process (where instead of thinking from where, you think from your ideal outcome and work backwards), scripting, answering shadow work questions (which help you get clarity on the feelings that govern the decision), etc. What method to use will depend on the type of decision that is to be made.
2. Thinking from the end – If you know your ideal outcome/goal, the best thing to make decisions is to place yourself in the position of someone in the future who already has achieved that outcome and work backwards to you. What decisions would that future (lets 6 months ahead) version of me have made to arrive where he is. This is best done through visualisation and meditation.
3. Steadfastness and going all in one thing – Following from the above, you can create a system that automatises your decision making. If you know what you want at some point in the future, then that is your anchor and all the questions about what should be done flow from whether they are consistent with achieving that goal. This steadfastness in a future goal creates integrity as it means you make decisions that are hard because they are the right decisions to be made. Overall, it creates a lot of ease. It is possible to want lots of things. I have learnt from experience that dividing up the energy between several goals slows the progress significantly for all goals – which increases suffering and agitation as nothing major happens in life. It also affects the system of decision making when you have two goals with contradicting actions – should I pursue my goals of travelling or pursue my goal of getting a new car? Both require money and so the system breaks down. I think the solution to this is to go all in one thing for a specfic period of time. Something like “For the next 6 months, I will only save money for a car”. There is a lot to be said about obsession which I will save for later. Going all in also reduces being in a state of wanting for a lot of other things which may accidentally mean that you end up getting those things anyway or those desires fall away that by the end of 6 months and instead you are looking at completely different desires (very likely to happen). It also helps show what desires were genuine (they withstand the 6 month hiatus) and which were just impulses (desires that fall away as circumstances change).
4. Repetitive desires – But what about if you dont know what you want? From my experience, you have to look at what desires keep repeating themselves across time no matter how much you try to avoid doing them. Those types of desires are usually indicative of what your life’s mission really is – your higher calling. If the desire, for example, to get in good shape keeps repeating itself again and again no matter how much you try to avoid it, it is likely you are being called to deal with this desire. Only once you achieve it will you be able to get over it. This is especially for desires where you have tried to negate them (it wont satisfy me), reframe them (I dont want to look good, I just want to be happy so why dont I pursue happiness differently), delay them (I can achieve it later or im just too busy right now) or trying to compensate for the action of pursuing them (e.g. learning everything about metabolism as a way to seek pleasure about health instead of getting on a diet and working out). So the question is: no matter how much I try, what desire keeps coming back into my attention in the last 6 months, last 1 year, last 2 years. It is likely there is emotional work to be done around the achievement of the desire – for example, negation of a desire may require unravelling limiting thoughts about your ability to achieve those deisre. Or it may simply be that it was not time for them to come into existence yet. Visualisation helps with figuring out these repetitive desires (what does the version of me in the future have and do and feel) and so do shadow work questions.
5. Rest and surrender – one of the best ways to deal with decisions is to put some time and distance between the decisions. Can you step aside from the thinking, leave the matter to rest and see what bubbles up outside of your mind? There is potential for real creativity in the solutions that arise from this. From my observations, a lot of my desires have been acheived when I gave up thinking about them to the point where I could only describe my actions in achievement of the desires as ‘out of mind’ or guided by higher consciousness, for example by finding myself at the right place in the right time. You can invite such out of mind action by actively surrendering the outcome to some higher being in which you can place faith.
6. Boredom – I find it impossible to discern what I really want when I am being bombarded with dopamine fixes – whether it is alcohol, snacks or social media. Great decisions require great dedication to making them. Step aside from dopamine inducing materials. Then, put the decision in your mind and exhaust every faculty and facilty to writing down your thoughts on it till you are bored out of your head. Dont leave your room till you are sure you are just repeating previous thoughts. Based on the magnitude of the decision, this may be 20 mins or 2 hours of being locked away in a room focusing on this one thing till you are bored of it.
7. What emotion am I avoiding – it is often the case that you know what you want but are subconsciously avoiding making the decision. A useful technique I learnt from Joe Hudson is to first ask: what emotion do I not want to feel by making this decision? If the answer is say ‘guilt’, then, ask: If i couldnt feel guilt, what emotion would I have to feel. This will likely lead you into a greater enquiry about why you cant make a decision. If you can fully feel the emotion you are avoiding, it is likely you can make the decision with better ease. Joe has a good podcast epsiode on decision making (see here: https://www.artofaccomplishment.com/podcast/how-can-i-make-better-decisions-decisions-series-1). This kind of thinking also helps discern from what desires are individidually mine (self-generated) vs desires that i have inherited from culture and society.
8. Being cheeky (sometimes) – based on the decision, it may help to look at the question with a bit of levity. Sometimes I say to myself “When presented with choices, always choose both”, and instead of making a decision I try to find ways to get both options.
9. Proceeding without clarity – I have said above that not making a decision has its own negatives – that your circumstances do not change and you remain ‘stuck’. The thing about clarity is that it is often a by-product of taking a decision or action. It is irrelevant what decision is made: if you make a bad decision, you get clarity about the right decision you should have made. It is often better to make a reversible decision that you are unsure about, and receive clarity from the consequences that follow, then to not make a decision at all. The reversibility of decision is important and something I read in Amazon’s leadership principle for ‘Bias for Action’ (here: https://cdn.cms.amazon.jobs/06/6d/5c207c284c7d9ecd6cef84fd0437/bias-for-action-transcript.pdf – “Speed matters in business. Many decisions are reversible and do not need extensive study”.) I used to think that you can fully achieve clarity simply by thinking the thing through. I was wrong and it was a hard pill to swallow: i cannot achieve the satisfaction of clarity simply by thinking things through and not taking action. Despite every writing technique, it is unlikely you can fully grasp the complexity of your action and the flow on effects that come from it. That is okay – it is the nature of life. As any complex system, the cause of our actions produce results that appear to be greater than the sum of our actions. That is good. But it also requires acknowledging that you are withholding yourself from the abundance that can follow. Once the writing is done, you must take the most appropriate action and simply see what happens. The gift of clarity of making a right decision or wrong decision awaits at the end of it.