Thursday, October 24, 2013

Making Quicker Decisions

What is the precise point at which one decides that one is simply done and moves on?  Not the fiftieth conversation we have with ourselves about how we should do something, but the time that it suddenly because a decision made and to be implemented?

I know that it is real.  I know because I have done it before.  There is just suddenly a sense about you, a determination that this time it is an actual decision and that from this moment onward you are simply going to go about the business of moving in this new direction.

My real interest is probably how does one get to that point more quickly.

As I have discussed before, I am someone to whom the art of making decisions - real decisions, decisions that are acted upon - is difficult.  I procrastinate.  I temporize.  I find reasons to accept the status quo and continue on with it, even as I may become more and more unhappy with the situation at hand.  It is only after I seem to reach a point - which arguably I should have reached some time earlier -that I finally make a choice.

And this is the issue: the amount of time it takes to make that choice, to reach that point of commitment, to agree internally that it is time to move forward.  Imagine what would be possible if I simply chose to compress this cycle, to make the commitment to move on after, say, three times instead of fifty?

I was reminded of this last night at Nighean Dhonn's soccer practice where her coaches kept encouraging them to "make quick decisions, make quick decisions".  Slow decisions made in the course of sports telegraphs one's moves to the other team and gives them time to adjust.  It would seem to be no different in my life as well:  the amount of time it takes me to commit to making that next step, moving on from the bad situation, gives life or the people involved the ability to "fix" the problem - which never really seems to fix the problem as too often it addresses only the symptoms, not the root cause.

It is not that the evidence may be there - it often is.  It is not that need for the change is there - it often is.  It is a matter of simply finding the confidence and ability to say "Yes, this really is not right.  It is time to do something different.  It is time to change this situation."

Because the more quickly we move from the undesired situations the more quickly we are able to move to the better ones.

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