In lieu of a rah-rah speech about the wins of 2024 and the promise that 2025 hold for us, today’s Muse is focused on the skill of decision-making. Why? Decision-making is one of the most important skills that you can build for personal and professional career success. It is a higher order skill that relies on myriad subskills such as courage, creativity, communication, analysis, problem solving, compassion, self-awareness, situational awareness, financial literacy, business acumen, constructive conflict, teamwork, and the list goes on…

It’s that time of year when we spend, spend, spend on holiday gifts for family and friends. According to The Conference Board, the average US consumer is expected to spend $1,063 this season on holiday-related items and $677 on gifts for others. When adjusted for inflation, holiday spending is at or near all-time highs. However, the most disturbing statistic is that a large proportion of shoppers are still paying off the debt they accumulated in 2023 to purchase holiday gifts.

The challenge we face is that critical thinking is hard. The easy path is to not question, not ask ‘why,’ and not dig for deeper meaning and root cause. The more difficult, but ultimately more rewarding path is to challenge fixed belief systems, internal biases, and recognize that when we deflect and point fingers at others, three more are pointing right back at us.

I get asked fairly often how an individual can improve this skill. So today, I’m going to provide listeners with a tool to improve critical thinking. Before we get started, a word of caution—improvements in critical thinking seldom happen overnight. Critical thinking skills are developed over years and maintaining this skill takes real effort—critical thinking can atrophy quickly if we abandon or reduce our commitment to continuous improvement and lifelong learning. It is sooo easy to get lulled into the status quo and easy to adopt a fixed, unyielding mindset.

Increase financial literacy, get educated, adopt an agile, lifelong learning mindset, periodically unplug from social media, advocate for changes to our educational system to improve the skills of critical thinking, creativity, and decision-making, do what you can to reduce your impact on the planet, and understand when you’re being played by politicians and the media. We are all in this together. Support your neighbor, get to know individuals from other cultures and other parts of the world.

For many of the early twenty-somethings in my class, stress and anxiety were highlighted as blockers to their ability to achieve their desired future state. They frequently find themselves spinning and, as some characterized it, paralyzed, by their anxiety. My heart breaks when I hear their stories, but I also know that we can do something about the current state.

A key point here is that life and financial security is all about choices and decisions. Make better decisions and you will be better off.