What helps YOU make a decision?
The feelings you get when you make a decision
One of my heroes, Peter Block, said that the mark of being an adult is being willing to make hard decisions. Consequently, the price you pay for being an adult is guilt and anxiety.
I know, it seems like a lousy deal, doesn’t it?
(You also get the responsibility for your own freedom, but I’ll get to that in a moment.)
Guilt because you’ve eliminated the other option.
Anxiety, because you’re never sure if you’ve made the right choice.
To decide — de-cide — comes from the Latin “to cut off.” Once you’ve said Yes to this, you’ve said No and cut off the other options.
Anxiety and guilt.
So often, we resist the hard decisions. Kick the can further down the road and put it off for another time, when we’ll be more sure, and perhaps those feelings won’t show up. (Spoiler alert … they always show up.)
Because, as the saying goes, a non-decision is also a decision.
Prizes and punishments
One of the tools in How to Begin is a process to weigh up the consequences of a decision (to do or not to do).
Every choice has prizes and punishments (the language I prefer to “risk and reward”).
When you arrive at that moment of a difficult decision …
One option is to not do the thing or to put off the thing.
The prizes are the comfort of the status quo, the non-rocking of the boat or disrupting of people’s expectations of you, the familiarity of what’s already known, the safety from risk and from failure.
The punishments are the boredom of the status quo, not exceeding your own or others’ expectations of you, unexplored and untapped potential, a sense of playing small, a nagging sense that you’re opting out for disappointing reasons.
The other option is to do the thing.
The prizes are the rush of adventure, the unlocking of and evolution towards the next best version of you, the potential upside of the challenge at hand, resetting people’s expectations of you.
The punishments are leaving the comfort of the status quo, the possibility of failure, the moments of uncertainty and ambiguity, the struggle of shedding your skin.
Reading back through this, I realize it might sound like I’m always saying “make the hard choice!”
That’s not the case. There are often reasons to say no and turn away from that opportunity.
The goal is to make that an active choice, not a default one.
When you’re at a crossroads, and asking yourself whether to go this way or the other, check the prizes and punishments of both, and act on what that tells you.
Bringing to mind the project, goal, or challenge you’ve held in mind through some of the other emails I’ve sent over the past couple weeks …
Take a minute with pen and paper or in a reply to this email to answer:
What are the prizes of not doing it or putting it off some more?
And what are the punishments?
On the flip side, what are the prizes of saying yes and going for it?
And what are the punishments?
And finally, what do your answers tell you about what to do next?
Whatever you decide, make it an active choice.
You’re awesome and you’re doing great.
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