Recently, I received an e-mail filled with "I'm trying to..." and "I'm hoping to...." When I hear that kind of language my heart sinks. All of those good intentions will likely lead nowhere because no real decision has been made. Without a clear, committed decision, success is unlikely.
Does this sound familiar? Do you say "I will try" instead of "I will?”
Every time you give yourself the out of just trying, you set yourself up for failure. The language of trying is debilitating and reflects a deeper ambivalence insuring you remain indecisive and unsuccessful.
There's lots of talk these days about committing to goals, but you can't commit until you decide what it is you will commit to and that requires making a decision. Making a decision is the most powerful action you can take and exponentially increases your chances for success.
Let me say that again...
Making a decision is the most powerful action you can take and exponentially increases your chances for success.
Once a decision is made, consistent and congruent action, the kind that leads to successful outcomes, flows freely without undo resistance. If you reflect on your life, I bet you'll see the pattern; success when you really decided to do something and failure when you didn't.
Making a decision is the key, but making that decision can be so very difficult.
I often have clients tell me that they need to overcome their fears, do more research, or work on their self confidence before they can make a decision. And where are they going? Nowhere fast.
It's not about overcoming fears, knowing enough, or building self confidence. It is about having compelling, life giving, and meaningful choices.
When I decided to quit smoking, it was because I realized I was going to die awfully young if I didn't. That's a compelling reason! Not all choices are compelling at such a deeply physical level, but compelling choices are always life giving choices. They come from what we value most in life. They come from where we make meaning. And they come from what gives us deep satisfaction.
So rather than working on yourself to get ready, I would suggest upgrading your choices. All of us, are capable of so much more than we think. We dream about what we want rather than turning the dreams into compelling goals. It is precisely those great big, compelling choices that really make us come alive...physically, emotionally and spiritually.
So why do many of us slam the door shut on the great big juicy choices?
Often it's fear especially if we've experienced failure in the past. Sometimes we're plagued with self doubt or get caught in a bad case of the "shoulds.” The most common response is to narrow the choices and play it safe. These tend to be low risk efforts that leave us feeling uninspired and bored.
Who wants to make a decision when your only choices are boring? I certainly don't! Do you?
Though it may seem counterintuitive in the face of fear and self doubt, the answer lies in expanding our idea of what's possible. Rather than narrowing our choices, we need to start thinking about great big, luscious choices.
Chances are the deep meaning we long for is going to be found in these larger more challenging goals. Expanding our options to include bigger goals will make the choices more compelling, the decision to commit easier, and the chances for success infinitely greater.
An inspiring goal pulls us forward diffusing the power of fear and self doubt in an instant. And the "shoulds" just become irrelevant.
So what are the biggest, boldest choices you can imagine?
Keep pushing to upgrade your choices until the decision becomes obvious. You'll know because the choice is challenging enough to be satisfying, so compelling that failure is no longer an option, and you can't help but say "I will...."
WRITTEN BY: SUSAN FULLER