Self-Management and Decision-making in Stressful Situations

Decision-making is an important life skill, based on the process of analyzing, identifying, and choosing alternatives in different life situations. The good thing is that we do not need to think about every moment and every decision we make during the day because our brains are designed to create a set of habits, through which we form a routine that relieves the pressure arising from analyzing the situation. Routine gives us the opportunity to focus and think about the more important decisions, which usually appear in new situations. These situations may be causing you positive (eustress) or negative stress (distress), and they require you to take some action, or you may not take any action, which is also a decision.

Psychologists say this skill is like an iceberg. The hidden part of it constitutes the set of our personal experiences, our system of values, habits, behaviors, preferences, thoughts, beliefs, feelings, moods, ability of self-management, and internal and external stimuli, all of which play a role in shaping our decisions, while the summit of this mountain represents only the moment of decision-making.

This article shows you some simple ways and tips for self-management of thoughts, feelings, and behavior in stressful situations to help you be wiser and more balanced when making decisions in these situations.

Stressful situations:

Stressful situations are situations in which your brain’s ability to predict the correct decision is low due to the ambiguity of the information needed to make rational, balanced decisions. This situation creates the feeling that you have no control over the situation and creates anxiety about losing that control. In turn, this anxiety clouds your judgment, and therefore the decisions you make under the pressure of these thoughts and feelings are poor. As a result, this makes you feel like you have lost control, causing this vicious cycle of negative thoughts, feelings, and decisions to continue because your brain focuses on the feelings rather than the decision-making process.

So, Why does this happen to you?

Because your brain is looking for clarity and for the familiarity and security that habits and routine create, so it aims to keep your decision-making efficiency under control. On the other hand, psychologists believe that the brain’s exposure to such situations increases the efficiency of our decision-making process by focusing on the entire decision-making process, rather than focusing on the decision itself, which stresses the brain, creates confusion in our judgment, and slows down our ability to make the best decision.

The solution to that is another skill that needs to work as efficiently in these situations, which is the ability to self-manage. Self-management starts with the individual’s conscious ability to deal with thoughts, feelings, and behavior in these situations. The good thing here is that we do not need to deal with both skills because a change in one of them necessarily means a change in the other.

1. Self-management by managing thoughts:

Psychiatrist “Daniel Kahneman” believes that the brain tends to make decisions through the interaction of two types of cognitive processes. The first is an automatic intuitive system, and the second is an analytical rational system. The first system is very similar to automated driving, where the person faces challenges in the type of thoughts that drive decision-making, like confirmation bias and the investment cost fallacy, in contrast to the second system, where the person shows slow decision-making and may eventually reach the point of inaction in the situation.

1.1 The automatic intuitive system:

It is quick, implicit in reasoning, simple in judgment, useful in urgent situations that are familiar to the decision maker who has experience with the type of decisions to be made in similar situations.

The disadvantage of this system is that your thinking is usually less flexible. It tends to seek out and pay attention to information that confirms your beliefs, while it ignores information that challenges your beliefs, preventing you from seeing the important information you need to make effective decisions. This way of thinking is called the confirmation bias. 

How do you deal with this kind of biased thinking?

Play the devil’s advocate with this kind of thinking by proving it wrong. For example, if you think option A is the best, write down on a piece of paper all the possible reasons why you think so, then write next to each point why that’s not true. This strategy can help you think outside the box and increase your creativity, and it can lead to more specific selection outcomes. 

Another challenge that inflexible thinking pulls you into is the so-called investment cost fallacy. Simply put, you decide to buy a ticket to a movie, only to find out that the movie isn’t worth attending, but you insist on attending only because you have paid for the ticket. In this case, you continue to lose because you cannot get refunded for your ticket. This is a failed investment, but you keep doing it because you don’t want to lose costs, even though the rule says that there is no relationship between costs and the success of the investment in the future.

How do you deal with this kind of thinking?

If you want to make an effective decision, make a clear cut-off point of what you consider success or failure to follow through on your decision. In our previous example of attending a movie, your goal might be to have fun. 15 minutes later if it turns out that the movie doesn’t provide you with the minimum level of fun, you stop the decision to attend because you have already lost out on the investment. 

This example is simple. For larger-scale decisions, you may need to draw a line between success and failure of the decision, which includes a number of points requiring you to constantly review the success or failure state of your decision. If the indicators are below the line, it is a clear signal for you to change your strategy and to choose another option.

Expert advice that you don’t stick to the original version of your decisions hoping that things will turn around at some point. Another tip is to announce your stopping point to others.

1.2 The analytical Rational System:

This system is stressful to your brain, and it is characterized by being slow and frank. It relies on analysis, suits less urgent situations, and reaches more effective decisions. It requires that you start by identifying options first, then specifying the criteria on which options are evaluated later, followed by gathering enough information to determine the best option among them.

For example, you cannot make a decision to buy a house except through rational, analytical thinking, gathering all the options available to you, then setting criteria to compare houses, followed by collecting enough information about each criteria for each home, and then comparing based on the information available to reach the best purchase decision.

What if I did all of that, and couldn’t make the right or best decision for me? Hesitation is normal, and scientists advise you to consult experts in the field of decision-making. In the example of buying a house, you should consult the experts in the real estate market to help you make a decision, and you should listen for any new information that may appear on the way.

2. Self-management by managing your feelings:

Psychologists tell us that we are rational and emotional beings at the same time. Everything we do and say, including decision-making, has a strong emotional basis. The aforementioned feelings of anxiety in stressful situations are negative, highly-stimulating emotions that push the brain to make unwise decisions. In order to make effective decisions in stressful situations, experts offer you these successful tips to manage your negative emotions:

2.1 Practice progressive muscle relaxation exercises:

Progressive muscle relaxation is a very simple exercise. It is related to alertness, depends on the body, and suits everyone. The technique is simply based on tightening and relaxing one muscle group at a time. Start with your hand, make a tight, firm fist then let it relax, then move to your arm, repeat the same process, move to your back, your other arm, your legs, and so on until you go through every major part of your body. 

This technique has been proven to help reduce ambiguity and negative stimulation in the body, which in turn leads to reduced physical stimulation, and thus a calmer and more balanced emotional and cognitive state, which in turn leads to more effective decision-making.

2.2 Make a habit of writing your diary:

The first step in managing emotions is naming them because it helps us deal with them in a more intelligent way, instead of living at their mercy. To deal with negative emotions, you have to write down everything that’s buzzing in your head. Write down how you feel, what you fear most, and the most pressing matter for you in the immediate future.

Writing everything down helps free up some mental space that had been occupied with processing your emotional state, and frees the mind from processing feelings. Also, it is good for effective decision making. Experts advise following these steps when writing: 

• Write down the feelings you’re experiencing at the moment, whether you’re nervous, anxious, sad, angry, excited, etc,.
• Determine how these feelings affect your mood (do they make you feel good or bad?), your behavior (do they make you act impatiently, angrily, or withdraw?), and your thoughts (do you think badly of yourself? Do you blame others?)
• Be careful not to have a judgmental attitude toward yourself, and remember that all emotions, even negative ones, are part of the human experience, fickle in nature and quickly changing. Accept them as they are and learn how they make you feel, which in turn can help you reduce the negative emotional impact of the ambiguity surrounding stressful situations, and encourage your brain to make wiser, effective decisions.

3. Self-management through behavior management:

What do you do or do not do in stressful situations? What do you say or do not say in these situations? Focusing on your actions can help clarify your decision-making process. It is important to realize that your actions follow your own thoughts and beliefs. What happens when your brain encounters ambiguity in the decision-making process is that it automatically tends to act according to what others say. 

Always remember that your perspective, as the decision maker, is crucial, simply because no one else can understand your situation like you. Despite that, looking for additional information or advice from others may be fine in some limited situations, but it can often be confusing.

To manage your behavior, experts walk us through some basic steps in building healthy habits to look for the necessary information, such as:

3.1 Describe the problem:

When we seek advice from others, we provide a general summary of the problem and then hear their opinions on possible solutions. Sometimes this can be helpful, but it can also often point you in the wrong direction.

What you need to do in particular is focusing on describing the problem rather than finding a solution. This helps others discover more details, and it plays an active role in asking questions and getting information from you. It is important though that they do not give you any immediate direct advice. In some cases, our personal experience or close friends and acquaintances may not be able to help us describe the problem. In those cases, perhaps you need a specialized coach to help you describe the problem and to ask the appropriate questions stimulating your creative imagination to discover possible solutions.

3.2 Do not fall into the trap of compliance:

Don’t give in to group pressure. The brain tends to make us believe that others are right in their opinions, and even if you are right at first, you are more likely to doubt yourself and agree with their opinions. As humans, we tend to go with the flow by changing our behavior as a result of social influence and group pressure.

The same applies to decision making. We tend to follow our own intuition in making our decisions, but it is difficult to justify a decision based on intuition, which makes intuition an unrealistic tool; thus, we become easily influenced by the opinions of others.

For example, if you say you want to do something “because it seems right”, your teammates can convince you that there is a better option because they have their own personal experiences.

Research shows that when making decisions in the ambiguity of difficult situations, past personal experience trumps assumptions. The following steps help you avoid this trap:

• Always focus on the first solutions that come to your mind and decide which one is best at first.
• Write it down.
• Stay open to the many possible decisions, always try different options, and gather information about your own experiences and the experiences of others until you find the most appropriate way to proceed with making the right decision.

Conclusion:

The skill of decision-making is an important and vital skill for humans, especially in stressful situations. This is because self-management is an important part of the decision-making process; therefore, it is necessary to focus on three aspects of Self-management. The first of which is managing thoughts, by paying attention to biases and the fallacy of the cost of investment and dealing with them successfully. The second is managing negative feelings, by writing diaries and practicing relaxation exercises that help the brain make better decisions. The third is behavior management, by describing the problem and searching for alternatives and more effective solutions to it.

Successful people agree that keeping a diary significantly reduces stress and anxiety. We advise you to take up diary writing as a daily habit, through which you make sure to write down the situations you are going through, focusing on the thoughts and feelings you had during the situation, and in the end, write down the words and actions that occurred during the situation.