Making a choice has to do with sankharas (volitional formations). Your choices are based on comparing likes and dislikes and choosing (intentions -> actions) is picking what you think is the best option. If you don't have a good handle on what likes and dislikes are for you in the long-term you may get addicted to choosing short-term choices to relieve aversion with pleasant things as a coping mechanism. If your choices are based on your deep values they'll feel a whole lot better in the long run whether it feels like a self or not making the choice.
Consciousness is the knowing part of your mind. Because everything you do is being watched passively by consciousness it can be a resting place where you can let everything (including emotions) be as they are without manipulation. This also means everything that is happening to consciousness is not a self precisely because it's being watched. This is often called the Greater Self in Advaita Vedanta. Now thoughts can pretend to be consciousness so you don't want to colour your knowing with a "benign watcher", or "cold voyeur". These are just perceptions and thoughts pretending to be consciousness. Awareness is aware of awareness so with Buddhism you can go further.
Read the Bahiya Sutta to gain an understanding on how thoughts are trying to experience what they can't experience and only your consciousness can register. Understand that thoughts are also known to consciousness and because thoughts and perceptions make your amygdala react with likeable or unlikeable concepts. Thoughts feel like a controller but it's the reactivity that pushes one to make a choice one way or another. The thoughts are for evaluation. That evaluation will spur on desire and aversion which motivates action. Look at dependent origination as less linear in time as it's laid out and more like cause and conditions that support each other. In experience they appear to be happening so fast that it's like they are happening at the same time. Understanding time as
happenings that go into the past instantaneously will give you a better understanding of supports and causes and effects.
Bahiya SuttaIn the seen, there is only the seen,
in the heard, there is only the heard,
in the sensed, there is only the sensed,
in the cognized, there is only the cognized.
Thus you should see that
indeed there is no thing here;
this, Bahiya, is how you should train yourself.
Since, Bahiya, there is for you
in the seen, only the seen,
in the heard, only the heard,
in the sensed, only the sensed,
in the cognized, only the cognized,
and you see that there is no thing here,
you will therefore see that
indeed there is no thing there.
As you see that there is no thing there,
you will see that
you are therefore located neither in the world of this,
nor in the world of that,
nor in any place
betwixt the two.
This alone is the end of suffering.” (ud. 1.10)
Look into the five aggregates (see
this) and the 4 foundations of mindfulness to see the huge variety of things that could be considered a self and look at it more like causes and conditions. There's no need for self-referencing all the time. Then your choices will look to be influenced by how much or how little your ignorance is of what the results are of your choices rather than a separate self making the decisions. Try to imagine your self existing in the future where there are more technological possibilities and greater understanding. Wouldn't your choices be expanded compared to living in pre-history where knowledge was less and possibilities would seem less?
To go more subtle with the practice notice how intentions also hit the consciousness. Intending to meditate or intending to note is more stuff that doesn't have to be grasped and clung to. Let the attention go where it wants and just note it without labels and watch it pass away naturally. The practice is best when you don't
add fixation and don't
repress experiences. Just let phenomena (including mental movements) pass away on their own. There is no "you" that has to let go. It let's go on its own if the impulses are not acted upon. So for example when you get lost in thoughts just let it happen and when the mind naturally comes back to the present moment don't do anything and look at thoughts
as an experience that just happened in the present moment like anything else. It's almost like a cloud that came and went and consciousness just watched it happen. Notice how daydreaming about possibilities in your future has some element of tension and solidity compared to how things are vibrating in the present moment. When those thought bubble tensions evaporate the space of relief can give you an out on whether to act or not. If anything you'll feel you have more choice.
Kenneth Folk's advice is something I also like to post because this is always about reducing stress because our choices as I said before are highly influenced by feeling tone and perceptions of likes and dislikes:
Practice becoming aware of the body sensations that correspond to a thought. Whenever a thought arises, feel the body. How do you know whether you like the thought or not? It's because the body sensations feel either pleasant or unpleasant. Notice that if you dissociate from this moment, i.e., step into the fantasy and leave the body, you will suffer. Suffering is not ordinary pain; ordinary pain is just unpleasant sensation. Suffering is caused by the dissociation, the stepping out of this moment, out of the body. Stay in the body and ride the waves of body sensation. Watch how the body reacts to the thoughts and vice versa. See how the looping between body and mind IS the dissociation. Short-circuit this by returning to the body. Stay with the body as continuously as you can. You are stretching the amount of time you can stay in the body without being blown out of it by an event or a thought. To be in the body is to be free. To be in the body all the time is to be free all the time.
Good luck in making good choices!