面临重大决策时 如何应对决策压力

For anyone who thinks of themselves as a leader — or an effective manager of their career — accepting a degree of fear when faced with high-stakes decisions may be necessary.

对任何视自己为领导者，或者认为自己能够有效管理职业生涯的人而言，在面临重大决策时接受一定程度的恐惧可能是必要的。

Therese Huston, author of a new book about decision-making, urges those who suffer when indecision takes over that they should try to enjoy it.

特蕾泽•休斯顿(Therese Huston)著有一本有关决策的新书，她力劝那些被犹豫不决困扰的人尝试享受那种感觉。

Tell yourself this isn’t anxiety, this is excitement, she says.

告诉你自己这不是焦虑，这是兴奋，她说。

Research shows that facing these workplace dilemmas with relish is better than trying to be calm.

研究表明，用一种享受的心态面对此类职场困境比试图保持冷静更好。

Forcing yourself to think about a high-pressure situation as an exciting challenge enables you to screen out the negative judgments of others and focus.

强迫自己把一种高压的情况想成一种令人兴奋的挑战，让你能够屏蔽他人的负面评判，保持专注。

If you’re not seeing threats everywhere, then you’ll make better decisions, says Ms Huston, a cognitive psychologist who advises companies on how to improve their decision-making.

如果你不觉得威胁无处不在，你会作出更好的决策，休斯顿说。身为认知心理学家，她为企业提供有关如何改善决策的建议。

In How Women Decide, which contains advice for everyone, she draws on research from Alison Wood Brooks of Harvard Business School, who found that trying to calm down can be counterproductive.

在包含给每个人的建议的《女人如何作出决定》(How Women Decide)一书中，她援引了哈佛商学院(Harvard Business School)的艾莉森•伍德•布鲁克斯(Alison Wood Brooks)所作的研究。

Studying performance anxiety, Ms Wood Brooks discovered that reappraising stress as excitement can boost results.

后者的研究发现，试图冷静下来可能适得其反。伍德•布鲁克斯在研究表现焦虑的过程中发现，将压力重新评估为兴奋能够提高结果。

And the stress brought on by a dilemma needs to be tackled, for the sake of making good and balanced decisions.

为了作出好的、平衡的决策，需要对付困境带来的压力。

An anxious state, Ms Wood Brooks says, is marked by a feeling of loss of control that can skew judgment.

伍德•布鲁克斯表示，焦虑状态的特征是失控感，这种感觉会影响判断。

Natalia Karelaia, associate professor of decision sciences at Insead, has examined whether mindfulness could improve professional and career choices, because, as she puts it, errors are partly due to the daunting difficulty of decision-making.

欧洲工商管理学院(Insead)决策科学副教授纳塔利娅•卡雷拉亚(Natalia Karelaia)对意识能否改善专业和职业选择进行了研究，如她所说，因为错误的部分原因就是令人气馁的决策困难。

Developing greater awareness of thoughts and emotions as we face a hard choice can, she suggests in a recent paper, help eliminate biases and impulsive reactions, improve judgment and reduce regrets.

她在最近的一篇论文中提出，在我们面临艰难的选择时提高对自身思想和情感的意识，有助于消除偏见和冲动反应，改善判断，减少遗憾。

Ms Huston recommends actively seeking evidence that challenges your preferred path of action, to make sure you anticipate problems in advance.

《女人如何作出决定》的作者休斯顿建议，主动寻找与你自身偏好的行动路径相左的证据，以确保你提前预见问题。

And always explore other options when facing a choice, rather than obsessing about a yes versus no — a binary choice with risks attached piles on the pressure, and often fails to get to the heart of the dilemma, says Ms Huston.

她说，在面临选择时，务必探索其他选项，而不是纠结于是或者不——附带风险的二元选择会加大压力，而且往往无法触及困境的核心。

Pause and introduce another alternative.

暂时停下来，引入另一个替代选择。

So to ‘Should I take this job or not?’, you might add, ‘or stay where I am but ask for a new role?’

因此，对于我应该接受这份工作，还是不接受？，你应该加上，或者留下来，但是请求换一个新的职位？

Studies of companies show, Ms Huston writes, that decisions based on a simple two-way choice turned out to be more problematic half of the time.

休斯顿写道，对企业的研究表明，在一半情况下，基于二选一的简单决策更成问题。

Considering more than two options resulted in a more positive verdict on the decision a year or so later.

如果考虑两种以上的选项，在1年左右以后，人们对决策的评判将更为积极。

Ms Huston advises practising the art of generating more than one option in everyday choices when you are calm and relaxed.

休斯顿建议人们在冷静和放松的时候，在日常生活选择中练习构思多种选项的技巧。

Make it a habit, she suggests, because when you are stressed, you usually want to move quickly from ‘What am I going to do?’ to ‘At least I’m doing something’.

让这成为一种习惯，她建议，因为当你承受压力时，你通常想要迅速从‘我该做些什么’转换成‘至少我在做些什么’。