How to Make Wise Decisions: Lessons from an Ancient Knight Templar

When my kids were young and growing up, they waited patiently and with great anticipation all week long for our Friday night family tradition; watching rented movies. Back in the video days, we would make the trip to the now-defunct Blockbuster Video Store and they selected our Friday night movie.

This tradition went on for years. Consequently, my children and I are very well-versed in movie quotes; which we still spit out verbatim to this day depending on what situation we’re in.

If we are in unfamiliar territory,

“Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”

If we want to know the bottom line,

“Show me the money.”

If we find ourselves in an argument,

“You can’t handle the truth.”

If we need to lighten up a serious moment,

“The bend and snap; works every time.”

All of these are great lines but the quote that is timeless and classically true for every situation in life comes to us from the Ancient Knight Templar in Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade:

“You must choose… but choose wisely.”

If you lived on another planet or were not yet born during the Indiana Jones Trilogy, you might have missed this epic quote spoken by the wise and ancient Grail Knight Templar.

The Grail Knight was considered to be the wisest and bravest of all Crusade Knights. His responsibility, which he fulfilled with the utmost of solemn and unwavering commitment was to guard the chalice of Christ; the Holy Grail.

How can you heed the words of the wise Knight Templar?

Regardless of the goals you want to accomplish or what you see on the horizon, there are certain choices you will inevitably have to make in life; will they be poor or wise ones?

In this blog, I will address examples of poor and wise choices; both with the capability of having either devastating or extraordinary consequences.

Choosing Poorly

How does one choose poorly? There are certain mindsets that some people possess that encourage poor decision making. Let’s look at 3 big ones.

1. Accelerated Pace

In this fast-paced technology-driven world we live in, we tend to impetuously rush through the decision-making process without being intentional in our thinking. Choosing poorly would be to accelerate the rate at which you make decisions rather than being thoughtful and methodical during the process.

2. Tolerating Toxic Thinking

Your thoughts determine your actions; thus if you have toxic thinking, you will probably have toxic outcomes. What does toxic thinking look like? Some of the most common toxic thoughts are:

• Dread and Anxiety
• Comparing Yourself to Others
• Self-Doubt

If you are constantly worrying and anticipating the worst-case scenario, you are a toxic thinker. The problem with this is that these thoughts possess you; you have given them control over your life and therefore, you’ve lost control.

When you compare yourself to others, you never win. Comparison is a deadly habit and is a thief of joy.

“The reason why we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind the scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel.” — Steven Furtick

Self-Doubt comes in many forms and is usually caused by limiting beliefs; the stories you tell yourself that are not true. This alone will keep you stuck and hinder you from moving forward.

3. Having a Judgmental Mindset

Being critical of yourself and others puts you in a Judger mindset. Having a Judger mindset does not allow you to evaluate situations with an unbiased lens. A Judger mindset always tries to find fault and blame instead of solutions and opportunities.

Choosing Wisely

Time to combat poor choices. Let’s flip the switch and explore 3 mindsets you can develop to help you make wise choices.

1. Develop a Possibility Mindset

Many people mistake positive thinking for possibility thinking; they are vastly different. While positive thinking allows you to see optimism in situations, possibility thinking is expansive; it allows you to see opportunities you might otherwise miss. Possibility thinking turns your “I can’t into, ‘how can I?’”

This one concept alone has the potential to change your life by expanding the way you think and make choices.

“Nothing limits achievement like small thinking; nothing expands possibilities like unleashed imagination.” — William Arthur Ward

2. Neutralize Words

Have you ever seen the weather tracker when following a hurricane? It’s always a huge sigh of relief when a violent hurricane that is about to hit land is downgraded; for example, going from a category 5 to a category 3 or 2. It’s not as potent.

You can do the same thing with words and thinking; you can take away their destructive power. A friend recently said to me, “This is so traumatic.” I knew what he was going through was not easy but the dictionary definition of traumatic is, extremely distressing, shocking or something having long-term psychological effects. So I asked him to neutralize or downgrade the word traumatic.

His first response was “This is really stressful.” He quickly changed it to, “This is hard.” Now that is downgrading! Going from traumatic which has long-term psychological effects to hard allowed him to see his circumstances in a less daunting light.

It empowered him to escape being overwhelmed and to be proactive in finding a way out of the situation. Once you take away some of the strength of the problem, it becomes more manageable.

Can you see how this one tip helps you make more rational decisions and less impetuous ones?

3. Create Peace of Mind

Because of the high-demand world that we live in, we are constantly being pulled in all directions. This does nothing for our health, our emotions, our relationships, or our state of being. We are continually leaking precious energy.

It is no longer considered a luxury to factor in rest and relaxation anymore; it’s a necessity. When you create an environment where you can press pause throughout your day and factor in mindfulness, you decrease your stress levels and increase your ability to regulate your emotions. All of this helps you to make wiser decisions; operating out of a mindset of being calm and in control rather than reactionary.

Let’s go back in time to our Indiana Jones story. The villain in the movie, Donovan, who desired to have unlimited power and everlasting life, chose poorly and suffered the consequences. He is instantaneously, in horror-like typical Steven Spielberg fashion, reduced to dust.

Emotionless and unmoved the Knight Templar quotes the best line of the movie,

“He chose poorly.”

Most people fail to realize that the costs of their decisions have the potential to compromise themselves and others with potentially dangerous and damaging lifelong consequences.

My intent today was to give you tools to help you not make the same mistake as Donovan; to not choose poorly. Rather, I hope you have been equipped with new insights to help you make wiser, more thoughtful decisions.

May the force be with you…oops, wrong movie quote. Hopefully, the Knight Templar will say to you as he said to Indian Jones,

“You have chosen wisely.”

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Originally published at http://www.transformuniversity.net on November 6, 2019.