These 5 choices can make you happier and less stressed no matter what your title.

I have a confession to make. As a busy entrepreneur juggling multiple priorities, I am at times completely overwhelmed by the number of choices that I have to make each day.

I know I’m not alone. It’s estimated that the average adult makes about 35,000 remotely conscious decisions each day. Some of those decisions may lead to unfortunate consequences.

As busy leaders, I believe we need to simplify our lives by reducing the number of decisions we make. More to the point, we need to focus on doing a few things right to avoid doing too many things wrong. Make sense yet?

Stop making dumb choices

This means being absolutely clear on the smart choices we need to make every day. Most of us have a pretty good idea about what we need to be doing to keep us on track toward our goals. Yet so many of us (I’m raising my hand here) have been sidetracked by outside influences and other temptations that take our focus away from the things that truly matter, leading us to make some really dumb choices. Let’s face it — every one of us has made a dumb mistake that has led to a failure at some point. And it’s bound to happen again.

Minimizing your failures will require making good decisions on the road to success. It’s what famous entrepreneurs have advised us to do because it has worked for them. Here’s what I suggest as safe guardrails on the path to making good choices:

1. Stop measuring your success by other people’s standards

When setting the bar for your own goals, please don’t fall for the trap of evaluating it by other people’s measure of success. Instead of trying to keep up with the Joneses, measure your goals by your own standards and not what the world imposes on you.

2. Let your truth guide your decisions

A safe roadmap for making good choices should never deviate from your personal values. Those choices have to come from deep within and speak your truth. When you know who you truly are and what your truth is, choices are easier to make based on how you naturally behave and see the world on the basis of those values and beliefs, not someone else’s. It’s taking the higher road to achieve success because it comes from the heart.

3. Don’t try to do it all yourself

Many of my coaching clients are in high-level leadership roles. You know what many of them commonly struggle with? Delegating. CEOs, in particular, have much trouble delegating; they’re afraid that no one can do their job better than they can themselves — but they fail to understand that delegating to others is a huge part of what the role requires and always a great choice to make. One person simply can’t do it alone.

4. Surround yourself with mentors

Mentorship can have a great impact on someone’s career development. In fact, I often advise my clients that success relies on surrounding themselves with the right people. It’s finding that trusted inner circle of close connections further down the path in business and life who can advise you on what to do and what not to do  This is also a smart choice because, as you absorb wisdom from mentors and sages, you begin to adopt their success traits. As the famous saying goes, we are the average of the five people we spend the most time with. Make sure to associate with those who can potentially help you learn new things, grow, and advance your career.

5. Protect your reputation no matter what

Running a business is the path to numerous tough decisions along the way. One of my favorite Warren Buffett one-liners which should be top-of-mind for business leaders speaks volumes of truth:

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.