Decision Making

About 10 years ago I found myself stuck in a bit of a rut. A “bouncing” rut if you will. I was bouncing from job to job, relationship to relationship, hobby to hobby, car to car and house to house. You can understand that this might become tiresome. I was mostly exhausted and a little lost for meaning in all of it. It took me a while to figure out what was going on with me and when I did it hit me like a cold wind. Not enough to knock me over but enough to take my breath away for a moment. I was scared.

Strange idea, this fear. What people saw of me was mostly fearless. Talk to anyone, climb to great heights, take risks that others would shy from and tell people very personal things. But all of this “fearlessness” was in an attempt to control my situation, control my image and show people that I wasn’t scared that I had no fear. What I realized was that it was fear that lead me to show this fearlessness.

I can remember when I figured this all out but I no longer remember what line of thinking got me there. In what I am sure was a brilliant, blinding flash of insight it became clear to me that I was very afraid. Afraid of closeness, afraid letting people in, afraid of failing. Basically, I was afraid of all the things I was so busy trying to prove I wasn’t afraid of.

I realize that this is not all that interesting. Anyone that spends any time at all doing some personal reflection will eventually come to something similar. Even at the time I understood that. But because I had been so wrapped up on my fearlessness it still took my breath away.

It took only seconds to come to a solution that would change forever the way I made decisions. It was simple and direct.

Make no decision based on fear.

This simple statement brought about a profound change in almost everything I did. “I might not like it” was no longer an acceptable reason for choosing one thing over another on a menu. “Because I might fall” was no longer an acceptable reason to rope up on a climb. That didn’t mean I went un-roped, I just changed my mind set to something like “I’ll have more fun if I rope up”. The list of excuses dropped away quickly after committing to this one simple statement.

Slowly things in my life changed. It wasn’t over night but, relationships got better (I’m now married with a kid), I stopped moving every time my lease was up (or before), and the bouncing rut that I had been in, flattened out a bit. Slowly these things changed, sometimes slower than I would have liked but I felt better about most all the decisions that I was making.

Advice: Try this for a week. For every decision make sure that fear doesn’t enter the equation.

Make no decision based on fear

Let us know how it goes.