Making healthy lifestyle choices is not always easy. At times, friends may try to pressure you into engaging in risk-taking behaviors that may actually harm your health. As you make your own choices, you need to understand how the choices you make can affect your health and wellness. To make healthy choices, you need to demonstrate certain skills. These skills will benefit you today and all through your life. Making Healthy Decisions Each day, you make decisions that affect your health and wellness. For instance, should you stay up late playing video games or get a good night’s sleep? Should you exercise on a painful knee? Should you eat that second piece of pie? Sometimes, you may need to make decisions to solve problems regarding friendships, dating, substance use, smoking or vaping, and sexual activity. The Decision-Making Process How you approach making a decision is important. Do you go with your gut feeling? Do you make the decision that is most convenient or makes you feel good? The best way to make healthy and informed decisions is to use a decision-making process. Many different decision-making processes exist. The DECIDE model of decision-making consists of six steps (Figure 2.1). Step 1: Define the Decision or Problem The first step in the decision-making process is to define the problem to be solved or the decision to be made. Depending on the problem or decision, this step can be easy or difficult. You can readily define some problems. For example, maybe you have trouble getting up on time because you stay up too late chatting with friends. You need to make a decision about how to get to bed earlier. Other times, you may need to think carefully about a situation and examine your own thoughts and feelings to define a problem. For example, maybe you feel unhappy at school, but cannot identify why. The problem could be a relationship conflict or stress at school. If you are having trouble defining the problem, try journaling about your feelings or talking with a trusted adult. Defining the problem accurately is crucial to making a healthy, informed decision. Step 2: Explore Alternatives and Options Alternatives are courses of action that are different from the actions you are taking now. Once you have defined the problem, exploring alternatives will help you understand the actions you can take to solve it. In this step, brainstorm all possible alternatives. To learn about different alternatives, you might talk with a friend or trusted adult or research solutions to a problem. Examples of alternatives to a problem are shown in Figure 2.2. As you brainstorm, think of alternatives from multiple perspectives. Do not rule out any ideas, and hold off on making any judgment until after you have identified all alternatives. Listing all possible alternatives can help you envision and remember your options. decision-making process steps for making a healthy decision include defining the decision, exploring alternatives, considering consequences, identifying the best alternative, deciding, and evaluating alternatives courses of action one can take Copyright Goodheart-Willcox Co., Inc. Chapter 2 Health and Wellness Skills 35