Prioritize owning your choices
Make the best choice you can and commit to it.
Have you ever made a choice and then kept questioning it?
Much of our regret doesn’t come from our decisions themselves, but from not owning them. For example, someone changes jobs and spends months worrying if they made the right move instead of focusing on making the new role work.
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When making decisions, it’s not only the choice that matters, but how you make it and own it afterward.
Before making a significant decision, don’t torment yourself trying to pick the right or best option. You can’t know in advance if a choice will turn out right because the future is unpredictable and reality is complex. You also can’t know the best option because you don’t know all possibilities and can’t try them all. Worrying “What if I make the wrong choice?” only adds stress and drains mental energy. Life design, which involves shaping your life path, is one example. It’s not about finding the perfect path, but about creating paths that are good enough and learning as you go.
Trying to pick the best option is like standing at a river, trying to decide which stepping stones will hold. You only find out by stepping.
Also, don’t torture yourself after making a significant decision. If you keep asking whether you chose the best option and dwelling on the paths you didn’t take, you will feel less satisfied and waste valuable mental energy. You’ll never know how the other paths would have turned out, and it’s easy to romanticize the ones you didn’t choose. Every real choice involves loss, because without it, it isn’t truly a choice. Acknowledge what you gave up and embrace your decision. For example, in life design, don’t dwell on the paths not taken and make the most of the one you chose.
Worrying if you chose the best option is like driving while staring in the rearview mirror. You lose control of where you’re going.
Every outcome of a significant decision comes from many subsequent decisions and actions, not just the first big one. Make the choice that feels best based on what you know and how you feel, and ensure it aligns with your needs, values, and purpose. Then adopt a mindset of ownership and make the most of your choice. For example, in life design, you’re not choosing for the rest of your life. You can adjust your course as you go and discover along the way what works and what doesn’t.
Try these strategies to make owning your choices a habit. Reinforce it by practicing these strategies consistently, or visualizing yourself using them. Plan for challenging situations and place visual reminders to stay on track. For more details, see Bring your desired mindset to life.
👉 Focus on making the best choice you can
Let go of the mental burden of chasing a perfect or best option. Accept that you cannot know all possibilities or predict the future. Start by setting clear decision criteria based on your needs, values, purpose, and goals. Then gather the information that is relevant to those criteria and weigh your options against them. Set a time limit to avoid overthinking. Choose the option that meets your criteria, rather than chasing an impossible ideal, and commit to making the most of it.
👉 Acknowledge what you give up and move forward
Recognize that every real choice involves giving something up. Make the trade-offs explicit by writing down what you are choosing and what you are letting go of. Name the loss clearly and accept it as part of the deal. Then make a conscious decision to stop revisiting it. Seeing loss as part of the process, rather than a mistake, makes it easier to commit fully to the choice you made.
👉 Adopt a mindset of ownership
Take full responsibility for the decisions you make, including their consequences. Stop framing outcomes as something that happened to you and start treating them as something you are shaping. When regret or comparison shows up, deliberately redirect your attention to action by asking, “What can I do next to make this choice work?” Define one concrete step and act on it. This mindset shifts you from passive worry to proactive engagement.
👉 Treat decisions as directions, not final destinations
Remember that every outcome of a significant decision comes from many subsequent decisions and actions, not just the first big one. You are not choosing once and for all. You are choosing a direction that you will keep shaping. Regularly check what is working and what is not, and adjust your course accordingly. This reduces the fear of making the wrong choice and reinforces your ability to influence the outcome.
👉 Reflect to learn, not to second-guess
Create moments to reflect, but give them a clear purpose. Ask what you are learning, what you would do differently next time, and what one small adjustment could improve the situation now. Avoid using reflection as a way to replay alternative paths or reopen the decision. Reflection is meant to inform your next action, not to undermine your commitment.
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You can’t control how a choice unfolds, but you can control how you relate to it. Make the best choice you can, then own it and shape what follows.
