Malala Yousafzai won the Nobel Peace Prize when she was seventeen. In part, the world knows about her because when the Taliban prohibited girls from attending school in Afghanistan, she spoke up about it, writing articles and giving talks. As is clear by her writing, Malala has strong values that include justice and equality for women as well as a love of learning and education. She also values safety. In making her choice to speak up and criticize her government’s decision, Malala was aware that she was increasing risks to herself and her family. In response, the Taliban shot (then fifteen-year-old) Malala in the head while she was on a school bus. Thankfully, she survived and continues to advocate for a future where girls are free to learn and lead.

Malala made decisions based on trade-offs among her values, even when the priority she placed on equality and justice made her vulnerable to Taliban hostility and increased her own risk of death.

After earning a commerce degree, Will got a corporate job and wore a suit to work every day, then came home to a rental condo in the city he shared with his girlfriend. After about a year he started to wonder why he wasn’t happy. Maybe if he took more time off or got a dog? But after another year of his job, a bit of travelling with his girlfriend, and a year of going on jogs and throwing sticks for their puppy, he still felt miserable. Will realized he had been doing all the things that mattered to others without knowing what truly mattered to himself. In a flurry of decisions, Will quit his job, broke up with his girlfriend, and moved back in with his parents. That’s when he ran into an old family friend, Leah, and, in a rush of details, told her about his life since graduation.

Exploring Consequences, the fourth Decision-Maker Move, is about understanding what will happen as the result of selecting any of the various options. Or rather, what is most likely to happen. Keep in mind, both uncertainty (about what occurs) and luck (either good or bad) often play a part in how things actually turn out. Study and do well on the exam, knowing that spending the evening studying won’t be much fun. Don’t study and probably do poorly on the exam but have a good time for a few hours the night before. It’s all about the consequences. Eat the fruit salad or soup special for lunch, feel great in the afternoon and get a lot done. Choose the huge burger and a double order of fries, feel sleepy and get less done the rest of the day. Consequences follow from the choices we make.

Decisions are doors that provide people of all ages with opportunities to express who they are and to learn about who they want to become. Sometimes the young people in your life may choose the wrong door and, while that can make for a good learning experience, you probably want to help them make good decisions and avoid the bad ones. You did, after all, decide to open up this book. While we cannot program kids with the answers they need to live healthy and fulfilling lives, we can support kids in learning and using a common-sense approach to understanding and organizing their feelings and thoughts as they make their own decisions.

Creating options is an exciting and fun part of making decisions. It’s what changes “I have to do this” (reluctantly solving a problem) to “I get to do this” (enthusiastically creating an opportunity). People often excuse their decisions by saying, “I didn’t have a choice – it’s just something I had to do.” But that’s rarely true. Decision options are almost always available.

If one young person is about to make a decision, helping them construct options is relatively straightforward. Once they are clear about which values might be affected, they can generate different options likely to satisfy these qualities.

The Skidegate dialect of the Haida, an Indigenous Nation on the West Coast of Canada, has a phrase for “staying curious.” Gina gii Giixan aanagung means “to look around with curiosity and intent.” This Haida concept holds more than curiosity; it conveys the idea of staying observant with the world on purpose. It suggests an active stance. Staying curious by asking questions, paying attention, and learning new things takes energy and action.

The Stay Curious and Adjust Decision-Maker Move is about decision makers being in a learning relationship with their choices, actively seeking to uncover and learn from new information based on their own lives and experiences as well as the conversations they have with others. It’s a recognition that many choices are repeated (with minor changes), so there are ample opportunities for self-learning and making adjustments.

Meaningful conversations require skills we develop when making thoughtful decisions. More than a common-sense approach to living, the Decision-Maker Moves enable us to effectively discover and express what matters in ways that get things done. By expanding our scope to include the wellbeing of others, even if the lives of the other people are very unlike our own, we can level up from the personal to the social – from ourselves to family members, to people living in our communities, to our cities and provinces or states, and – in some cases, such as with Abhay – to our world.

At times like this, when the way forward isn’t clear, framing the choice – a quick check into what the decision is all about – can be helpful. And important. Taking control over how we picture the decisions we face is part of transforming decision problems into decision opportunities. The decision frame determines how we bring who we are and what we care about into the decision-making picture.