Life Skills & Leadership: Unit 2, Session 3: Making Decisions | Page 42 of 127
“S is for Select an option – use your Head, Heart, Hands, Hope (Check in with yourself on all levels;
consider them all. How do the options fit logically, emotionally, socially, and in terms of your goals?)
“E is for Evaluate the outcome (Make a plan to review your decision and make sure it’s still what you
want. Often we think a decision will be final; that there is no going back. Fortunately, most decisions
can be changed and often, over time, new options present themselves as solutions that we had not
seen before.)”
- Give participants extra copies of Handout 1: PAUSE for Better Decisions and encourage them to write
some notes in the spaces as you talk through the steps of PAUSE that Lena might follow. Read the
example of Lena’s Situation (below) and ask the participants to speculate about how Lena might
respond to each of the steps in PAUSE.
Note: As an alternative to copies of handouts, participants could reproduce the information on plain paper.
Lena’s Situation:
“Lena lives with her mother and three younger brothers. After school she helps her aunt by repairing
and altering clothing that her aunt gets from friends and neighbors. This gives Lena some extra money
to help her family. Unfortunately, she doesn’t earn enough money to keep much for herself. Last week,
a tailor who has a shop in town asked her to work for him each day after school.”
- Use PAUSE to help Lena with her situation. Ask participants what they think might be going on for Lena
at each step of PAUSE.
“Pause – what is the decision? (Possible answers: Either take the new job with the tailor or keep
working for her aunt.)
“Ask – what are the options? (Possible answers: Keep the job with her aunt. Quit working for her aunt
and take the job with the tailor. Look for a different job from either her aunt or the
tailor. Work for both her aunt and the tailor on different days. Stop working altogether.)
Note: This step may be difficult for participants so encourage them to come up with more than the two most obvious
options.
“Understand the consequences. (Possible answers: Keeping her current job makes her aunt and other
family members happy. Working for the tailor she earns more money but may make her
aunt unhappy. There may not be other jobs for Lena to try for. Working for her aunt and
the tailor may make her too busy to do her schoolwork. Stop working altogether and
Lena can focus on her studies, but she won’t have any money at all.)
Note: This step may also be difficult so encourage participants to really think through what might happen.
“Select an option. (Possible answers: Head: Making more money with the tailor is logical. Heart: It’s
important to keep her aunt happy. Hands: She could consult with her mother and some
friends. Hope: Lena has dreamed of being financially independent and perhaps having
her own tailoring shop one day.)
