4 Powerful Ways to Get Instant Clarity When Making an Important Life Choice

How often do you face a decision and have a hard time making a choice? Whether it’s a big issue or a small one, you just can’t seem to find any clarity. And when you do finally make a decision, you second-guess yourself.

There’s something to be said for clarity and decisiveness, yet it can be hard to find in the moment. Perhaps some simple tips, frameworks, and techniques could help you make better and more confident decisions.

4 Tips for Gaining Clarity

Clarity – i.e. the quality of being coherent and intelligible – has nothing to do with being right or accurate. In fact, you can possess total clarity about something and still get it wrong. The key, from a decision making perspective, isn’t to get every decision 100 percent right. The goal is to make choices with greater confidence and conviction. 

Here are some techniques you may find helpful:

• Ask for Input

There’s a reason leading politicians, business owners, and coaches in professional sports surround themselves with consultants and advisors. They understand that they’re limited by their own experiences and cognitive capacities. The sooner you reach this conclusion in your own life, the better.

You are only one person. For better or worse, you’re stuck inside your own brain. This often prevents you from seeing a decision from multiple angles. Thus, it’s extremely helpful to ask for input and allow someone else to offer advice or perspective from a different vantage point. 

To get the best results, keep the input to a minimum. As helpful as it can be to gather insights from two trusted people in your life, it can be just as damaging to get opinions from half a dozen people. Too many voices will only worsen your indecision. Find one or two people you trust and listen to what they have to say. Contrast this against your own inclinations and use the available information to make a choice.

• Think Through the Lens of a 90-Year-Old

When entrepreneur Tonya Leigh has trouble making a decision, she likes to reframe the choice by looking at it through the lens of what her 90-year-old future self would do. She pictures herself as a “grand dame” who has “French kissed life in every way possible,” and therefore has incredible clarity, perspective, and conviction. (Think someone like Audrey Hepburn or Sophia Loren.)

Why your 90-year-old self, you may ask?

“You see, the thing about a lady of a certain age is she says exactly what she thinks,” Leigh writes. “Really, have you ever met a wishy-washy elderly lady? Rarely. She has opinions developed over a lifetime of learning what truly matters. She has the answers you’re looking for, and she’s not going to sugarcoat anything.”

Thinking through this lens also makes you realize how important it is to go with the choice that you’ll be proud of when you’re 90. It’s a perspective shift that frees you up to think outside of the isolated box.

• Reference Tarot Cards

Do you have trouble making simple yes or no decisions? Are you the kind of person who doesn’t really care where you go to dinner or which car you buy – you just want the decision to be made? You may find tarot cards helpful.

Try referencing tarot cards in simple yes or no decisions where reaching a decisive conclusion is more important than actually selecting one choice or the other. Like many others, you should find some relief in having the decision made for you. And if you’re a believer in spirituality and divine wisdom, you’ll feel an instant boost of confidence that you’re making an inspired decision. 

• Set Deadlines

Have you ever considered that you don’t make quick and efficient decisions because there’s no pressure to act within a certain time frame? You may benefit from taking a more structured approach.

There’s a reason why businesses set deadlines and schools set due dates. It has its roots in Parkinson’s Law, which says work expands to fill the time available for its completion. If there’s no firm deadline for when you have to make a choice, you’ll continue to put it off. If, on the other hand, there’s a firm due date, you’ll make a quick decision. 

Take it Easy on Yourself

You live in an imperfect world with uncontrollable variables. You are a flawed being with a brain that’s vulnerable to mental biases and heuristics. Give yourself some grace to mess up, make the wrong choice, or proceed in the wrong direction. Sometimes it’s less important what you choose to do and more important that you take action and do something. As you get better at cultivating clarity and making choices, you’ll develop the freedom to make faster and more efficient decisions that produce fewer regrets. And, at the end of the day, isn’t that the goal?