Adventurous Mom

Posts Tagged ‘big transitions’

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

I guess grow­ing up, we are often taught to be hum­ble.   As chil­dren, say please and thank you.  If you are given an award, it is fine to dis­cuss it but not to brag about it.  The bible teaches us that humil­ity is a noble qual­ity.  Yet every­one has great­ness hid­den deep inside of them­selves.  It is that great­ness that con­tin­u­ally bub­bles up and shows it’s face.  But, who are you to be great?

So we run around in life, think­ing that we are bound by limitations…who are we to be great?

We aim for small goals because fail­ure is the reminder that we are not sup­posed to be great?  Or is it?

So, here is the Maken­zie Kelly take on this:

Every­one should and is sup­posed to pur­sue their GREATNESS!!  And you know what?  Some­times your great­ness is scary, and out-of-the-box, and totally uncon­ven­tional!  Yet, some­thing mag­i­cal hap­pens when you con­nect to your great­ness; sud­denly the stars align, the uni­verse bows, your ene­mies become your friends, and it FEELS Awesome!

And I would argue that you may be lying to your­self if you say “I have no Great­ness!”  Because in the depths of all of us, there is some­thing that you deeply DESIRE to do, or FEEL com­pelled to do, or YEARN to BE!  So many exam­ples of this have occurred in our his­tory.  The Great Babe Ruth (for­give me because I’m a huge base­ball fan!!) was GREAT at base­ball.  He was not dis­cour­aged by his strike-outs.  In fact, he struck out more times than he hit the ball.  So he did not say to him­self “Man I’m a lousy Base­ball player, I should just quit.”  In fact, he con­tin­ued to go to bat, for what­ever rea­son (was it his great­ness that com­pelled him? Was it his arro­gance?  Was it his igno­rance? We may never truly know.)

It will never be per­fect when you are pur­su­ing your great­ness.  While the uni­verse may align in your favor, there will be dra­matic shifts in your per­spec­tive and your growth.  You will be chal­lenged in ways you have never imag­ined.  Yet this chal­leng­ing will help to pro­pel your growth and your desire to be GREAT.  Stick wtih it!  You are meant for Greatness.….!!

And speak­ing of Great­ness, I invite every­one to visit my NEW Web­site and Busi­ness:  Free­dom Ven­ture Project

This is my Great­ness Rear­ing It’s Head…!  See you there! ~Makenzie

It started the Thurs­day before New Years, a last minute trip to take the kids to the snow.  We promised them we would do a snow trip dur­ing Win­ter break, and so I found a cheap Hotel (not cheap as in dive…but cheap as in $49!) in Reno, and we set sail to the biggest lit­tle city in the world.  Luck­ily, there is a Cir­cus Cir­cus there for the kids to immerse them­selves in what I call “gam­bling for kids” or the arcade.  To be hon­est, it was my hus­band that was the big roller here.  You should have seen the streams of tick­ets that guy won!

Reno was fan­tas­tic and the kids had a blast…  here is “Fluffy the snowman”:

we decided to make our snow day a snowman-challenge mak­ing day.  I just hope that the Snow­man doesn’t real­ize the kids were call­ing him Fluffy, I am sure he would have pre­ferred to be called “Ice­Man” or some­thing like that.

On our way home from Reno,  I get the con­fir­ma­tion that we will be need­ing to drive to Los Ange­les the next day.  I was get­ting rid of my Range Rover, and the buyer was in LA.  The Range Rover was a casu­alty of my deci­sion to retire.  Not being active in the busi­ness any­more did not neces­si­tate the need for the  vehi­cle  and the tax issues would get sticky, so it had to go.  Plus, I was unwill­ing to drop $925/mo on a car pay­ment from my per­sonal funds ugh! Cer­tain logic ruled in this instance.

We spent one night in our own beds, and the next morn­ing, on the road again for five hours to LA.  The accom­mo­da­tions were not as nice, the hotel was 2xs the cost and there were no blink­ing lights or danc­ing clowns.  Yet, as always, we man­aged to have fun, and made our way to Her­mosa Beach the next day to bask in the South­ern Cal­i­for­nia sun.  70 degrees, warm sand, surfers in the water, it was a typ­i­cal SoCal win­ter.  Ahhh, I love the sun.

The hand-off of the Range Rover occurred seam­lessly, the new owner, a late 20’s some­thing New Yorker-turned-LAer-turned-High-Roller was now in proud pos­ses­sion of the beau­ti­ful sil­ver SUV.  I showed him the bells and whis­tles, he signed the papers, and that was the last that I saw of my lux­ury vehicle.

We then got on “the” 405 free­way to “the” 710 and were on our way to the Long Beach aquar­ium, when it hit me…the lump in my throat wouldn’t go away.  I tried to cough, no.  I tried to gag, no.  It wouldn’t go away, then I got short of breath. Was this a panic attack?  The tears started to roll down my face, I was dri­ving a car that I was unfa­mil­iar with, on a busy LA freeway…oh no. Snif­fle, cough, gag, sniffle.

I just gave up my prized pos­ses­sion, handed the keys over to a per­fect stranger! I loved that car.…people loved that car.  If I had a dol­lar for every time a man said to me, “My wife so badly wants a car like that…!”

My dar­ling hus­band was speech­less because I had been so “matter-of-fact” about need­ing to get rid of the car for the last two months.  “But my Satel­lite radio, and my seat heaters…I don’t have those in the Explorer!!”, I con­tin­ued to snif­fle and cough and gag.  It just won’t be the same.

I parked the rental car, and dried off my eyes, and heard a deep-down voice say to me:

“No Maken­zie, this is not what you want, that is your Ego talk­ing and not your true self.  Your true self wants to spend those pre­cious moments with your kids.  If you keep that car, you will need to get a job instead of spend­ing time with your kids. Your true self wants to design the life that you want.  Your ego wants things and approval.  Your ego has failed you count­less times.  Now is the time to lis­ten to your true self.”

That car wasn’t who I was, it didn’t mat­ter to my kids what kind of car I drove.  It was not a dif­fi­cult deci­sion to make log­i­cally, or financially…but the ego and emo­tional play was far big­ger than I anticipated.

I think this is what hap­pens often when peo­ple get “stuck” in a sit­u­a­tion.  They fear that dia­logue with their ego…the one that asks them, “What will peo­ple think?” or tells them “You are not smart enough to try some­thing new, you will surely fail…and then…what will peo­ple say?” They are so afraid that their Ego, rather than their True Self, is right, that they stall and say things like, “It’s just not that easy” or “Life is complicated.”

Well, life is not com­pli­cated, as I am here to tell you.  Our fam­ily con­tin­ues to over­come adver­sity with phys­i­cal injuries, career changes, fledg­ling finan­cial mar­kets.  But really, our life is simple:

We Love each other, We spend time together, We enjoy adventure.

That’s it.

Many adven­tures to you!

Maken­zie

It has been an incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult past cou­ple of weeks for our fam­ily and for our extended fam­ily. We lost four won­der­ful, heroic police offi­cers in the line of duty on March 21, 2009. Two were Motor Offi­cers, and two were SWAT offi­cers. I admit that as the wife of a deputy sher­iff, I had an incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult time pro­cess­ing the events and I was very, very sad. I was also sur­pris­ingly sad for the young man that lived in so much fear of the police that he felt his only choice was to kill or be killed. Our soci­ety is very sick and the sick­ness is show­ing in the way that some of these poor chil­dren are being raised.

What I have taken from this mes­sage of death is that our life should be lived as if we were dying. For those of you that are coun­try music fans, this is a fan­tas­tic Tim McGraw song from a few years back that goes a lit­tle some­thing like this:

“I went sky­div­ing
I went rocky moun­tain climb­ing
I went two point seven sec­onds on a bull named Fu Man Shu
And I loved deeper
And I spoke sweeter
And I gave for­give­ness I’d been denyin’
And he said some day I hope you get the chance
To live like you were dyin’”

Okay, I’m a lit­tle country…and I love it. But seri­ously, this was my theme song a few years back and it is funny how quickly we for­get the things that shape your life. This song was instru­men­tal in my per­sonal vision of liv­ing each day fully. Hor­ri­ble events such as this recent one with our brave police offi­cers also shape our lives. It can help us to remem­ber that our days are num­bered, and every expe­ri­ence on this earth is here for us to learn from.

So when we remem­ber our friends that gave their lives so oth­ers can live in peace, let’s not let their sac­ri­fice be for naught. Remem­ber their brav­ery by cel­e­brat­ing your life. When you’re being both­ered by those small stres­sors in your day, or you want to com­plain about your neigh­bor, or you want to be grumpy.…is this the best use of your time here? Our time is meant to be lived with pas­sion, with hap­pi­ness and fully. I picked a pic­ture of me hold­ing one of my favorite bot­tles of wine (Bode­gas Aguirre Caber­net) because I truly love drink­ing wine! That is one of my pas­sions and what brings me joy. So I’d like to raise my wine glass and toast our fallen officers.…your mem­ory will not be for­got­ten, and I promise to live each day as if I were dying!