Making Good Decisions

Too often people don’t make the time and they are not in the habit of asking powerful questions that evoke emotion to and create hope in a better way of working and living.

You cannot go through life on auto-pilot – there needs to be a high commitment to managing decisions that you make and before that can happen, you probably need to make some new decisions. Most decisions that need to be made will begin with and spring forth from an internal, intuitive perspective but without asking new questions, often this internal emotion lies dormant.

Questions that are both heart and head provoking can begin to move an individual to a position of having to make new decisions. I teach a process called Life Planning and here are some examples of questions I use each year as I review my annual Life Plan :

What if…? (I could go home on time. I could save more. I could spend more time with my family. I could get that promotion. I could become self-employeed.) Whatever are my dreams or desires and what if I could achieve these?

How would the person I see myself being in the future be handling the issues of today?

What would need to happen to take my life to a whole new level? My business?

What decision could be made in the next 5-minutes and what action could be taken in the next 60-minutes to create fulfillment and happiness in the (state area) of my life?

What am I not willing to settle for any longer in my life? My business? My finances? My health? My relationships?

Which areas of my life are most stressful for me these days? Why? What hope lies ahead in helping reduce the stress in that environment?

What could I say “no” to today?

New questions serve one key purpose – to make our intuition come alive. They also hit hard in the area of common sense. We all have a “gut” instinct to what decisions we should be making. We all know in our “heart of hearts” the key areas of our business and our life that need new or different choices.

Intuition is always first when it comes to decision-making – the reasoning always comes second. What new questions do is cause those emotions to come to the surface on the important issues that need to be dealt with. Balance is a result of acting on those emotions and reasoning is the process through which the best decision is made. All of our key decisions require facts. And if the facts were understood, we would see how many of our decisions could be altered or fixed. But it all starts with the gut! And because of this, balance is always in flux, a constant process of decision making and managing the decisions made; a process of intuition and integrity. So when we arrive a point where our gut is telling us something, we MUST move on it, balance the emotion of this with facts, the making of new decisions, and then the management those decisions consistently.

In my own personal journey of making and managing decisions, I have learned two very important truths:

1. Intuition is most effective when it is educated
2. Analysis is most effective when it is isn’t over done

Spend the rest of this year asking new questions and coming up with new solutions that will change your life forever.