“It doesn’t matter which side of the fence you get off on sometimes. What matters most is getting off. You cannot make progress without making decisions.”~Jim Rohn
How many habits would you like to change in 2015?
How many goals have you set in areas of finances, lifestyle, relationships, physical, mental, spiritual, family and career? how much would be on your list?
For many us, we have more than 10 things listed down in the inventory of changes to make. And they all need to be worked on right now!
I’ve had several people come to me and say they aren’t sure where to begin. They are paralyzed by all the things that they want to change in their life. They want to travel more, say no more often, find the love of their life, eat less junk food, try to learn to dance, practice more yoga, call family more often, and so on…. BUT the paralysis of wanting to do it all now is overwhelming. Consequently, this doesn’t help anything at all.
Below you’ll find 3 strategies for making a decision so you can get going.
I like to think of it as a staircase.
You could try to jump up the whole staircase at once. And you would probably fall flat on your face. I wouldn’t laugh at you (really!). The safest way to get to the top of the staircase is to take one step at a time. Stepping up one after another will eventually get you to the top.
“But that takes too long!” you may be thinking to yourself.
If your somewhat athletic you may try jumping two steps at a time to get to the top even faster. The more momentum you build, the more steps you can conquer at one time. Even with momentum and long legs, getting over 5 or 6 steps is really challenging. Going too fast may lead you tumbling down back to the beginning.
At the very least you know that you will start with one. It’s a start.
Then, How do you decide what the first should be?
1. You could be super analytical like I am and make a decision matrix.
Put your options on one axis. List out your deciding criteria on the other and give it a weight. Ease to implement, Affordability, Proximity to home, related to something I’m doing at work. These are some rough examples. After you have your criteria, give each item a score from 1-10 and let the highest scoring item go first.
example: Decision_Matrix.xls (excel file) [ download no longer available] contact me for a copy
2. You could ask the focusing question like Gary Keller does.
“What is the one thing should do first that by doing it would make everything else easier?”
example: “paying down my debt will make it easier to buy those tap dancing shoes I need”
another example: “cutting my spending on Cheetos will give me some extra money to pay down my debt. I’ll work on the junk food first.”
3. You could leave it to fate.
Roll a dice.
list out your options, close your eyes and randomly drop your finger on one.
Ultimately, deciding one will be enough to get going. Trying to do them all at once leads to exhaustion.
Any other ways that you can think of? Share your strategy in the comments.
Bonus: I’ll add two more ideas since my brain juice is flowing. I drank some rooibos tea today.
4. Ask 3 friends to vote for their top three choices. Choose the top choice.
5. Go alphabetical. Choose the first one.
I think you get my point.
Keep moving. Keep Tuning.
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