Do You Struggle To Make Decisions?
3 Questions that simplify decision making
How often do you stop and take stock of your life?
If you are anything like me, I set myself goals, feel fired up, ready to get going.
But then life happens.
If you are like this, you find a year later or even more that you are not where you had expected to be.
You find yourself each New Years’ eve hoping that the next year will be better than the one that has passed.
Do you ever wonder how you have found yourself down this road?
Down a rut that you hadn’t expected upon traveling.
I would find this happening to me. Until I began to stop and ask myself three questions, which I will share with you.
Let’s take a step back first and understand why you get off the path.
Like a mountaineer who gets his map out before he climbs the mountain, so too must you plan your route before you set off.
It’s no use getting started on your journey on the mountain only to discover that you don’t know which path to follow.
Or which route will take you up to the top.
You may find yourself traveling in circles or descending when you had planned to go up.
If you don’t know, where are you are going how will you get there?
Alright, you could follow the signs along the way.
But that means relying on them being there.
And that you notice them.
You see in life we have signs along our journey.
The problem is we don’t always see them.
Sometimes they scream out at us.
They jump in front of us.
But still, we push on by and ignore them.
Stop and take a moment.
Can you recall a moment like that?
A moment no matter how small, when there might have been a sign in front of you?
A sign that told you not to do that or to try something different?
I can recall a moment like that.
I remember coming up to a traffic junction, something told me to stop.
It wasn’t a stop junction. But I stopped anyway.
A car came flying out of nowhere on that junction.
Had I not stopped it would have been a different story.
We get these signals all day and every day.
Often, we ignore them.
We hurry along in our lives rushing to what we must do for the day.
We have taught ourselves to stop listening to these subtle signs.
Some call it intuition.
Some call it gut feeling.
Some call it luck.
We can learn to tune into it again to recognize those signs.
So, we can make decisions according to what the signs send us.
For example, when you must make an agonizing decision.
If the thought of making that decision is causing you agony.
Even distress.
Then you need to listen because that is a sign.
Similarly, when you can feel the clarity in another decision you will know what you need to do.
Along our way we get signs.
You can either choose to follow them or you can choose to do what you have maybe always done and ignore them.
Then wonder why you are where you are five years down the line.
So where are you on your journey?
Are you running on time or are you late?
Are looking out for the signals?
Or are you hitting red traffic lights?
Are you planning?
What do you do when you reach the unexpected along your journey?
What do you do when you meet up with a roadblock?
Do you turn around and try to find another way?
Do you wait it out or give up in frustration, turn around and go back?
I’ve heard it said many a time, that how you show up in one part of your life is how you show up in all areas of your life.
So, think of how you handle the little things in your life?
You are the guide in your own life, you need to trust and follow the signs you get.
The signals I follow are simple.
It is what I have learned from taking too many wrong turns.
It is what I have learned from not following just what is in front of me.
It is what I have learned from hindsight.
I follow these three simple things I learned when I’m not certain, and you may want to start to use them too. (I take no credit for coming up with them, I read them somewhere, but can’t remember where otherwise I would credit that source).
Here are the three questions to ask before you do anything
1. If it feels right, then do it.
2. If it doesn’t feel right, then don’t do it.
3. If you don’t know, then do nothing and wait until you know.