Skills for Making Great Decisions

About This Course

Learn how to make excellent everyday decisions from an experienced counselor and life coach. In this six-week online course, you'll learn about some wonderful abilities we're born with for figuring things out and making good decisions. You'll also see why our instincts and intuition sometimes deceive us and how self-knowledge can help us guard against becoming overly confident. You'll discover the steps necessary to achieve your goals, as well as the power that ordinary, everyday decisions can have over the quality of your life.


You'll learn how to deal effectively with crisis, how to use your emotions as decision-making tools, and how to work with others to make good decisions. You'll develop some important guidelines for when to take risks, when to trust your luck, and what to do if you make a mistake. The goal of this course is to give you the power to live the best life you can and make the very most of every opportunity.

About The Instructor

This course includes a knowledgeable and caring instructor who will guide you through your lessons, facilitate discussions, and answer your questions. The instructor for this course will be Donna Brown.

Since 1983, Donna Brown has been an individual and family counselor. She's worked with hundreds of individuals and families,
helping them improve the quality of their lives by teaching them how to make reasonable, rational decisions. She's also skilled in crisis intervention, helping people in crisis make sound decisions despite stressful conditions. Donna has many years of experience as an instructor in adult education. She holds a master's degree in counseling and continually updates her credentials through postgraduate studies.

Syllabus

A new section of each course starts monthly. If enrolling in a series of two or more courses, please be sure to space the start date for each course at least two months apart.

Week 1

Wednesday - Lesson 01

Your brain is amazingly well-equipped with all kinds of tools for making great decisions! Natural skills, such as pattern matching and problem framing, often help you make wise choices. But just owning tools doesn't mean you know how to use them skillfully. In our first lesson, we'll discuss how to make the most of some of your natural abilities and also avoid some common pitfalls, like bias, myopia, and overconfidence.

Friday - Lesson 02

Did you know that you make decisions virtually every minute of every day, even in your sleep? Just as drops of water, given enough time, can carve out a canyon, all those decisions—even the little ones—will eventually have a huge impact on your life. In this lesson, you'll learn about five kinds of decisions you make every day, as well as the critical difference between actions and intentions!

Week 2

Wednesday - Lesson 03

What's the difference between a goal and a dream? A goal is something you can control through your own efforts, where a dream depends on luck or fate. When you want something, how do you know if it's a dream or a goal? How can you make your wishes come true? You'll find many of the answers in this lesson. We'll talk about short-term and long-term goals, the steps for achieving goals, and how to know when you should change your goals.

Friday - Lesson 04

In today's lesson, we'll discuss when and how to pay close attention to those little, seemingly unimportant everyday decisions that really do make a difference. You'll learn how to identify three types of decisions—conscious, unconscious, and subconscious—and know when decisions for change need to be made. You'll develop some very useful skills for planning, prioritizing, and dealing with that thief of time, procrastination.

Week 3

Wednesday - Lesson 05

What is a crisis? Is it something that happens outside of you, or is it how you feel? What are the qualities that make a situation critical? How can you make the best decisions possible when time and information are limited but you're under a lot of pressure to take action? Today's lesson will help you cope with uncertainty and prepare for the unexpected. You'll learn techniques that can help you relax and cope better, regardless of what may be happening around you.

Friday - Lesson 06

Life would certainly be dull if we didn't have feelings! Good feelings—like love, joy, and laughter—give us pleasure. Bad feelings—like confusion, sorrow, and guilt—can help us learn and grow. But feelings often conflict with logic and reason and get us in trouble. How do you know whether to listen to your emotions or ignore them when it comes to making decisions? You'll find some of the answers in this lesson

Week 4

Wednesday - Lesson 07

Like emotions, other people certainly help to make life worth living. But boy—can they ever complicate things when it comes to making good decisions! In this lesson, we'll discuss some important skills for setting good boundaries with others and dealing with disagreement. You'll learn how to develop attitudes that are essential for good relationships and how to work effectively with others to make the best possible decisions.

Friday - Lesson 08

You've heard the expression "Nothing ventured, nothing gained." Sometimes you have to risk a little to gain a lot. But when is it best to go out on a limb, and when is it best to hold on to the trunk? In today's lesson, we'll go over some foolproof guidelines for managing risk. You'll also decide if you're basically a risk-taker, a play-it-safe type, or somewhere in between.

Week 5

Wednesday - Lesson 09

Luck happens. But are we completely at its mercy, blown around on the sea of life by the winds of change? The answer is no! In this lesson, you'll learn how the element of luck affects what you expect from life and how to use that to your advantage. You'll find out how to avoid being misled by superstition and wishful thinking, as well as how to use positive expectations to help steer your life the way you want it to go.

Friday - Lesson 10

Have you ever made a mistake? Do you expect that you may someday make another one? If so, then the topics we'll explore in this lesson are important! You'll learn about some of the main reasons we make poor decisions, as well as both healthy and unhealthy ways to respond to your own errors. You'll learn how to recover from mistakes, turning them into opportunities to learn and grow.

Week 6

Wednesday - Lesson 11

Habits can be terrific time-savers! They often allow us to do the right thing automatically, without even having to think about it. On the other hand, we all know that there are those other kinds of habits—the ones that lead us to do the wrong things automatically! This lesson will give you power over your own habits as you learn skills for developing good habits and getting rid of the ones you don't need.

Friday - Lesson 12

Throughout this course, you'll use a journal to help you learn about and practice some good decision-making skills. In our final lesson, you'll learn more about the power of journaling. You'll also get some ideas for how to use other very useful decision-making tools, including notes, lists, and diagrams. Finally, you'll get some good ideas about when to consult experts and when to wing it on your own.

Requirements

Internet access, e-mail, the Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox Web browser, and the Adobe Flash and PDF plug-ins (two free and simple downloads you obtain at http://www.adobe.com/downloads by clicking Get Adobe Flash Player and Get Adobe Reader).