How good are you at making decisions? If you are still pondering the answer to that question then you already have your answer…let’s move on!
Making decisions is actually, in most cases, really easy to do. You know what to do, more importantly, you know what you *want* to do, you decide to do it and, as has already been said, you move on. Decision made.
But that’s not what happens for many of us, is it? In fact what actually happens is we know what to do, we know what we want to do…then we look to see if there is an easier or less scary way to do it, we ask some other people in the hope they will make the decision for us, we worry about it for a bit, we procrastinate, worry, ask about, worry and then we then make a half ar$ed, safe decision that goes just some of the way, but never all of the way, in the hope that ‘it will do for now’ and then, when it all goes t!ts up, we decide we’re crap at deciding because we didn’t do what we knew we wanted to do in the first place and the whole cycle becomes even more difficult next time.
Sound accurate!?
The two places I see this strategy carried out most often is giving up smoking and losing weight. Both of these things are big things. Especially with weight loss, it can take time and both require lifestyle changes. But they are things that people all around us want. So why don’t they get it?
My opinion? It’s simply because they never truly decide to do what needs to be done.
I totally promise you, when you truly decide to lose weight or give up fags, you will. The biscuits will stop miraculously jumping in your shopping trolley and even Jim in accounts offering you a fag on that night out, when he should have known you were two weeks into giving them up, won’t be enough to make you go ‘aye, alright then, just one’. But to make these changes, it takes YOU to decide.
A decision is a moment of certainty. A moment when you draw a line that you want go back across. It is a moment of power where you gain a clarity and focus, where a switch flicks in your head and you just know, you don’t know how you know but you know, something has changed.
You don’t have to fight it, you don’t have to be told, you don’t need to feel good or ever feel like you’re cheating, you just choose, completely and congruently, to live life a certain way and, from that place, I promise you, even changing the big stuff is easy.
I know if you think about your life there will be times when you made a decision like this one. You’ll recognise that nothing would have ever undone it even if the results of that decision were painful or sore. You will remember just being focused on keeping yourself safe, happy or free and that made even the sore bits easy to cope with. So, you have the ability, now all you need is some practice!
Try it on. I dare you! Give it a shot tomorrow. Just for one day, decide to make a change. Doesn’t have to be a big one, but make is a good one. Decide right now that you are going to stick with it. Feel free to post it here in the comments if you want all of us to see how well you did tomorrow. But decide.
There’s a wee phrase I remember picking up a long time ago; baby steps lead to miracles, miracles don’t lead to baby steps.
Time to just find your feet tomorrow. Than maybe the next day you can decide to walk a little further. Who knows where you’ll be by the end of the week…
Do Good Things
Brian
