Do you have a list of goals and desires that have yet to be fulfilled? Do you find yourself generating exciting new ideas only to find that you lose the motivation to complete them shortly after you get started? Perhaps you talk yourself out of that great new idea even before you even begin to pursue it.
The good news is that there is a very simple yet powerful technique that you can adopt immediately to help you commit to completion. The technique is called decision.
Proper decision making ability is a vital life skill that many people fail to develop at all. At first glance, this idea may seem trivial and possibly not useful but consider the context of this discussion.
When I talk about decision, I refer to someone’s personal commitment to the completion of a set objective. For some people, the simple act of making a binding agreement with themselves is enough to get the job done. For the majority of people, however, a more bold approach to decision making can be applied for maximum effectiveness.
Consider the following personal example:
Before I started my personal development company, Ignite Your Essence, I had been interested in becoming a speaker and I was always studying and testing various ideas and techniques that I was learning about the personal development industry. I knew that I had an inner calling to follow this passion and teach people what I knew about these ideas and philosophies.
I attended an inspirational seminar where the speakers were talking about this very topic. The main message I received that day was that we are all 100% responsible for our results and we are capable of setting any goal we want for our life.
I really took this to heart and started to contemplate the idea of becoming a platform speaker – teaching, inspiring and motivating audiences much like the people who I was watching that day. Because I was in a state of mind that allowed me to get emotionally involved with the idea, it grew beyond a daydream and I started thinking about how I could make this happen.
I started studying personal development principles for many hours a day and taking note of which techniques I was already using in my current career while learning and applying new ideas in various areas of my life (family, fitness, financial as well as career).
Eventually, the idea of starting a business as a speaker grew so heated that I knew I had to do something. For about a week, I played a mental chess match with myself thinking about all the reasons why I should pursue this dream while simultaneously thinking about all of the reasons why I couldn’t do it. As soon as I learned this lesson about decision, everything changed and my life has never been the same.
I woke up one morning and made a committed decision to book my first public workshop. I picked a date about one month out, found a hall to host it and booked the hall with a down payment. I was locked in and committed to doing this! It was both a mental and physical move that made a world of difference.
The ambivalence instantly disappeared and my mind moved into a much more creative mode. Instead of worrying about whether or not I could even accomplish this goal, I started asking myself a new set of questions. What topic do I run the workshop on? How do I advertise? Who do I market to? Needless to say I completed that workshop a month later and so began the inception of my own personal development education company, which I now run as a full time business (my dream realized).
The key point to be emphasized is that I made a committed decision and backed that decision with a tangible forcing function. Like the stories of the Renaissance explorers, I had arrived at a destination, “burned my ships”, and had no choice but to move forward and deliver the goods.
Can you think about a committed decision you could make today, RIGHT NOW, that could ultimately alter the entire direction of your life?
Perhaps there is a trip you have been meaning to take that could open a new window of opportunity – call the travel agent now! If you have been struggling with your health and fitness, maybe you can find a competition to enter and pay the entry fee? Whatever it is, make the decision and lock yourself into the decision to ensure you have a solid forcing function.
For me, if I did not put a down payment on the hall rental for my first workshop, I may very well have let the doubt and fear push me to cancel the entire event and ultimately abandoned my dream. If the idea moves you in the direction of your dream or purpose, make the committed decision today!
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