It can be easy to decide what you want for din­ner or what shirt to wear, but what about those deci­sions that really affect you in the big pic­ture? Those deci­sions like your major or who you want to be with.

Usually when you’re in a posi­tion to make a deci­sion and oth­ers are wait­ing on the answer, you’re asked, “What do you want?” And you’re asked that a lot. But hon­estly, how are you sup­posed to answer that when you don’t even know?

Coming from the girl who can’t even pick a table at the Rock Cafe, being in a sit­u­a­tion like this is mis­er­able, to say the least.

Decisions like these are often the hard­est ones to make. We spend our time ask­ing our­selves every “what-if” ques­tion we can imag­ine and con­tinue to go in cir­cles. We think we have our mind made up one day, only to go to sleep and feel the oppo­site the next.

As I have spent the last three weeks work­ing on mak­ing one of “those deci­sions,” I found I have learned a few things in the process.

The first is to not lis­ten to other people’s opin­ions. It’s nice to talk with friends about these types of things (espe­cially if it’s tak­ing a toll on you emo­tion­ally). However, with that, it’s impor­tant to take what they say into con­sid­er­a­tion, but real­ize it’s not their deci­sion to make.

I found it’s impor­tant to remem­ber that no mat­ter how much you tell some­one about the sit­u­a­tion you are in, you’re the only one who is liv­ing, breath­ing and (con­stantly) think­ing about it.

Therefore, you are the only one who can choose what is right for you. Hearing a num­ber of people’s opin­ions makes it dif­fi­cult to fol­low your own heart.

Something some­one con­tin­ued to tell me while I was in this type of sit­u­a­tion was to be self­ish. When mak­ing a big deci­sion, you need to think about you–no one else, because at the end of the day, you’re the one liv­ing the choice you made.

Another thing I have real­ized in this is to pay atten­tion to things hap­pen­ing in your life. Make your­self more aware of who you “hap­pen” to run into, as well as the events you want to go to. Take a look at where your mind wan­ders while day­dream­ing in class. I know it sounds crazy, but it could be a sign of what to do.

Finally, and the one that I strug­gled with most, was give your­self some time, but not too much. I found that I con­tin­ued to push back mak­ing a deci­sion because I was wait­ing for some­thing else to hap­pen in the situation.

In all hon­esty, this just made it harder. Waiting ulti­mately only hurts you and the oth­ers involved. Realize now that the per­fect sit­u­a­tion is never going to come. Figure it out, and the sooner you do, the bet­ter you will feel.

As I’m one of those peo­ple who can give advice all day long but never take my own, I hope your deci­sion will be eas­ier made than mine.

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