Are you someone who makes decisions quickly or do you tend to sit on the fence, and get …chaffing?
Every moment of every day, we make decisions. Sometimes our decisions seem small and inconsequential, and sometimes the decisions we make will change the course of our lives. In the end, though, the outcome of our day, our year, and our lives are defined by the decisions we make and the actions we take to serve them.
For over 25 years, Napoleon Hill, the author of “Think and Grow Rich” studied the most successful people of his time and what he consistently found was these individuals had the habit of reaching decisions promptly and changing these decisions slowly. When you make a decision quickly, you leave no room for doubt, worry, and confusion. Instead of wasting time worrying about all of the possibilities and trying to endlessly analyze every potential outcome, making a quick decision enables you to immediately begin devoting your efforts to following through on that decision.
So…why is it that almost all of us suffer from decision paralysis at some point in time, and how do we change this?
Oftentimes we make decisions that are based on our current situation; Successful people make decisions based on where they want to be. “People with goals succeed because they know where they are going.” (Earl Nightingale) Sadly, most people spend more time planning a vacation then they do to creating a vision for a life they would love to live. They look at the conditions of their current situations and feel stuck…and where their attention goes, energy flows.
To transform our lives, we must have a clear vision of where we are going and what we’d really love; “A Stanford study showed that those who saw a photo of their future self made smarter financial decisions.” A.J. Jacobs)
The second principle of transformation requires that we make a decision for our vision, without knowing “how” it will come about. When we are pulled by the expansive energy of our vision, we live in alignment with the Power breathing us, and this is where and when the magic happens. “When someone makes a decision, they are really diving into a strong current that will carry them to places they had never dreamed of when they first made the decision.” Paulo Coelho
“The moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one, that would never otherwise have occurred… A whole stream of events issue from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no one could have dreamt would have come their way.” William Murray
The rigor of the work of transformation, is holding fast to our decisions when we don’t immediately see results. This is when it is so important to NOT second guess and give up on ourselves.
Every decision brings with it some good, some bad, some lessons, and some luck. The only thing that’s for sure is that indecision steals many years from many people who wind up wishing they’d just had the courage to leap.
In the end, we only regret the chances we didn’t take and the decisions we waited to make. What decision are you going to make today? Just make it…. and then take action. Put it on the calendar and commit to it, commit to yourself, to moving forward, to living a life you’d love.
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