Adventurous Mom

Do you ever get par­a­lyzed with mak­ing a deci­sion?  Is it dif­fi­cult for you to decide when hard choices con­front you?  You get scared and you get fear­ful, so instead you do nothing?

Well, inde­ci­sion is some­times a curse that befalls us all.  We then pro­cras­ti­nate and then get noth­ing done.  Napoleon Hill sum­ma­rizes this par­a­digm in his book Think and Grow Rich and why it is dam­ag­ing to our suc­cess. “ACCURATE analy­sis of over 25,000 men and women who had expe­ri­enced fail­ure, dis­closed the fact that LACK OF DECISION was near the head of the list of the 30 major causes of FAILURE.”

We argue to our­selves that we need more time to think about it, and then we take more time, but often the deci­sion gets cloudier the longer we think about things.

There are sev­eral types of per­son­al­i­ties that strug­gle with inde­ci­sion.  There are those that make choices quickly think­ing they have all of the infor­ma­tion they need, only to back pedal on their deci­sion days or even hours after mak­ing it.  This is quite frus­trat­ing, even for these peo­ple because they have a dif­fi­cult time get­ting things done, they have to undo and redo.  Energy and time is wasted for their lack of decision.

The other per­son­al­ity type is those that fear any kind of deci­sion at all.  I call these peo­ple Ana­lytic Paralytics…frozen with infor­ma­tion over­load.  At some point in our lives most peo­ple hit this cross­road, espe­cially when big deci­sions need to be made. We want so badly not to make mis­takes, so we gather and gather and hunt for infor­ma­tion.  We ask ques­tions, we seek advice, we get opinions….but the more infor­ma­tion we gather, the more dif­fi­cult it becomes to decide!

Inde­ci­sion is par­a­lyz­ing, it keeps us from our goals and our dreams!  One thing for cer­tain is that it will be unlikely that any one per­son will have 100% of the knowl­edge nec­es­sary to make a good deci­sion, it’s just impos­si­ble!  So, you are doomed to make bad deci­sions in your life, and that’s okay.  Keep­ing this in mind, how bad might some of your deci­sions become?

Most deci­sions that we make are not irre­versible, we can change them back if need be.  I would even go as far as to say that 90% of the deci­sions we make are totally irre­versible.  If we decide we are not sat­is­fied with the out­come of our deci­sion, we can change it.  So for the bulk of our deci­sions, they likely have lit­tle to no con­se­quence, and are eas­ily fix­able if some­thing goes wrong.

For the 10% of dif­fi­cult deci­sions that may not be irre­versible, we can ask our­selves these series of questions:

1. Do I have choices?  What are my choices? (A good teacher once told me one option is not a choice, it’s a con­se­quence, two make a dilemma, and three make a choice.)
2. Am I lean­ing toward one decision/choice and how do I feel about that choice? (Keep­ing in mind that fear is a healthy emo­tion sur­round­ing change and decision.)
3. What do I have to gain if I make this choice? And what do I have to lose?
4. If I lose, how dif­fi­cult will it be for me to recover?
5. Lastly, what do I really want?

Going through a deci­sion rubric such as this really brings down one’s fear lev­els regard­ing deci­sion mak­ing.  Our Ego mind is so quick to judge us! (How dare it!) It puts up the fear as safe­guards to doing any­thing out­side of your com­fort level.  But it inad­ver­tently sab­o­tages our suc­cess (are you going to let this hap­pen? How dare it!)

Lastly, don’t let your inde­ci­sion be the rea­son why you fail as Napoleon Hill points out.  Make a deci­sion, stick with it for a while, and if it doesn’t serve you, then change!  What do you really have to lose?

Join on in the con­ver­sa­tion and leave a com­ment below!!

For now, Many Adven­tures to You!

Maken­zie

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