Alexander Jendrusina, Ph.D., Counselor with the Faculty and Staff Counseling and Consultation Office offers some practical tips on decision-making.
We all make countless decisions each day. What to eat, what to do, where to go, what to wear, and so on. Yet, making these decisions is not always easy. That's where an approach called value-based decision making can help. To do this, it’s important to know what your values are and how they can guide your choices. Let’s break down each of these areas.
Take Some Time to Identify Your Values
Defining your values helps identify what’s important to you. Some examples of values are health, community, spirituality, and family. They can also be things like compassion, humor, or creativity.
We can think of values as principles, what we want to embody, or strive for. It’s important to keep in mind that values are not the same as goals or outcomes. In other words, values are not things we “complete” or “do.” For example, to reach a goal of managing stress you focus on the action of exercising more. The value you are prioritizing in this case is health.
Use Values as Your Compass
Once you identify your values, you can use them as your compass to guide the decisions you make. The next time you’re faced with a decision, check in with your values. Ask yourself, “What’s important to me?” or “How do I move forward in a way that matches how I want to live my life?”
Let’s consider an example. you are deciding whether you will attend a family event during a busy work week. When you check in with yourself, you connect to your value of family that you want to honor more. A value-based decision then would be deciding to attend.
Consider Which Value to Emphasize
Which of our personal values we choose to focus on can change based on the situation. Let's use the same example of attending a family event.
While you may have the value of family, what if you recognize that you are also physically exhausted? You could decide to stay home, to focus on your value of health. In this case, you give yourself time to relax and recover and decide that you will go to the next family function. In both examples, you are checking in with what’s important to you at the time when you are making a choice.
Emphasize What's Most Important
The next time you’re feeling stuck when making a choice, try using your values to choose what you do. It can help you live a life based on what’s important to you. So, try channeling your values and see if it works for you!
If you’d like to learn more about identifying or making value-based decisions or are interested in support, counselors are available for confidential services. If you work on any academic campus (Ann Arbor, Flint, or Dearborn), contact the Faculty and Staff Counseling and Consultation Office (FASCCO) at 734-936-8660 or [email protected]. If you work at Michigan Medicine, contact the Office of Counseling and Workplace Resilience (OCWR) at 734-763-5409 or [email protected].
