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Dalton
Roberts |
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Eric Butterworth put something into words that helped me to improve my decision-making skills. He said, “Don’t try to make a decision. Your need is to discover a decision.” Business management books warn against procrastination . They talk about being “a decisive manager” until one gets the feeling that success lies in being a decision-making machine, continuously spitting out rapid answers. My experience is almost the opposite. I think the worst decisions I have made were made when I felt I had to make a decision. Why is this true? I think it is because a feeling of franticness is no basis for a sound decision. When we feel we must make a decision, we probably should take a nap. The first question to ask ourselves in a moment of panic when we feel we must act, is what brought on this feeling of franticness? The place to look for the answer is within the feeling itself. Ask yourself, “How much fear is in this feeling? Where does this fear come from? What triggered it? Once we remove fear from our decision-making, the chances of making a sound decision multiply. One of our most neglected skills is intuition. It is a skill that cannot be rushed. As we quietly seek the wisdom of our intuition, it will respond best to inner stillness. A feeling of franticness is the last thing it needs, I practice a game called “The Rotisserie.” I shake the decision down to simple a simple question and turn it over and over in my mind as I write down every idea that comes to me. To sense this for yourself, get quiet and say to yourself, “I must make a decision” and notice that only your brain responds. It responds with anxiety. Now say, “I must discover a decision” and notice how your whole being settles into that thought. What’s going on here? The answer is simple: You are activating your intuition. The very word “make” denotes stress and effort. The word “discover” stirs up a calm form of excitement called expectation. It generates energy and a feeling of fun. Speaking of fun, we need to work more fun into our decision-making times. It may seem that seriousness is called for but seriousness pours molasses into our decision-making gears. When someone tells you, “Get serious!” always smile and keep smiling until the serious feeling fades. I took a self-development course one time and they had what they called “the seriousness exercise.” It convinced me to limit seriousness except where lightheartedness would be considered rude, unpatriotic, inappropriate or inconsiderate. You may say, “Oh, but how can you not be serious about sickness, divorce, death and some of the grim realities of life?” To see these things as necessary facts makes them more manageable than labeling them as “grim.” The way we label things infuses them with emotions. The worst decisions we will ever make will be when we feel grim about the situation we are trying to decide upon. If we feel we must “make” (manufacture) a decision we will tend toward grimness. If we see that good decisions are discovered, we touch the situation with creativity and even a little playfulness. I once taught a college course in creativity and reviewed the research to discover the most effective way to activate creativity is playfulness. It sounds silly but it’s only silly if we are too serious. When we are discovering a decision, we feel ourselves reaching out with our whole being, rather than just our minds. We feel the tentacles of our creativity pulling in ideas from all directions. We tap into happy energy. While I hope some of these ideas will help you discover the decisions you wish to make, you will find that discovering a decision is easier to do than to describe. There is no automatic formula for creativity. The fun lies in discovering what works for you.
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