Episode 39: Formula For Success - Step 1: Decide

Hello my Friends, welcome to episode 39. It’s September if you are listening to it when it first comes out. So many things are happening. Summer is winding down. School has started back up. In the feedlots, we are prepping for the fall run. Harvest is well underway.

Things are busy. New things are starting and we are reaping the rewards of the summer season.

So let’s talk about formulas for success. We will work through a formula for success this month. Let Successful September begin!

Last week we simply talked about the importance of not quitting.

How if we are going to find success we have to not quit too early.

We have to believe it is possible for us and not give up when things get hard.

But how do we make sure that we are not just repeating the same mistakes over and over?

How do we make sure that we are growing and learning from our failures not just repeating them?

How do we use our failures to build success?

This I want to break down into a very simple formula for success, It is:

Decide

Try

Fail

Learn

Repeat

Step 1 Deciding.

This is an important step. I see clients get stuck in indecision.

Indecision feels useful but is preventing us from finding success.

Our brains love to live in indecision.

It’s a safe space because we are stuck. We don’t make decisions and therefore we don’t take any risks.

It is an easy place to be too. We don’t make decisions we don’t have to do any work.

It takes up time and sometimes makes the decision for us. Opportunities pass us by and then there is no decision to be made.

“I don’t know what is best” or “I don’t know what to do” are really easy things to think about. They feel very real so our brains always believe them.

How often do you hear yourself saying “I don’t know _______”?

How does making decisions feel?

Why do you struggle to decide?

Common things that I hear from my clients.

No, I really don’t know what to do.

This one is interesting.

Because yes maybe you have never done the task before.

Yes, maybe you have failed before.

Maybe you have seen others fail.

Maybe there are a lot of unknowns.

But if we don’t know and we don’t do anything, then we are never going to figure it out.

A simple shift in our thinking from I don’t know to I don’t know yet can open the door of possibility to you.

The truth is we never really know what is going to work until it works.

So we have to do a lot of things that we don’t know how to do or we don’t know how they will turn out.

The key is to make sure that you are not allowing not knowing, to keep you from doing.

Even though there are a lot of things we don’t know we still have to decide and do things.

There are two really powerful questions you can ask yourself if you hear yourself saying “I don’t know” a lot.

1.       If I did know, what would I do?

This just simply opens the door to your own wisdom. Allows your creative brain to go to work. There are many options you could choose from. Let’s take a look at what those options are and decide if we want to try one, two, or maybe more.

 2.       If anything was possible, what would I do?

This one I love because so often we disregard the best idea by saying it isn’t possible. I mean the best ideas are passed over because we say it isn’t possible. What if you simply entertained those ideas a little more? What if you considered them as options?

These two simple questions can help us to get thinking and see that we can figure it out.

Now another big barrier to decision-making is the fear of making the wrong decision. As I have heard some people say, “Just don’t make a million-dollar mistake.” To me, this statement paralyzes people. Now costly decisions can be made. But it can also be just as costly or more costly to not make a decision.

When I am faced with this fear, I often challenge the fear. What if there was no right decision? And therefore no wrong decision either.

We need to put some trust in ourselves. We have the ability to figure things out no matter what happens.

What if making the other decision was just as expensive or more expensive than the one we chose?

The truth is we don’t know.

The other component of this fear is how we treat ourselves after a decision is made.

Some of us question ourselves endlessly. Ruminating on it. Jumping back endlessly to the worst-case scenario. Telling ourselves we were wrong (sometimes before we even know how it will turn out).

What if we were kind to ourselves?

What if we showed a little trust in ourselves?

What if we recognized that we were humans who made mistakes, and that was ok? We are also brilliant humans who can find solutions.

So Let’s set ourselves up for success by practicing making decisions.

Get a feel for making decisions.

Do the research if necessary and then decide.

Choose something this week.

See how it turns out.

Good or bad, have your own back about it. Be proud you chose.

It will be fun.

Have a wonderful week.