Honesty and openness are a big part of this small blog’s agenda . So I’ll keep it brutally honest.
In this post, I will share with your exactly why I’m dissapointed with myself at the moment and the key thing I learnt to change that. So lets dive in.
We’re in August, and I haven’t moved an inch on achieving my 2016 goals.
Well, it’s not true – We’ve doubled the business revenue and doubled our team size. But those were all linear. The leap I was planning for was bigger than that.
On the other fronts – I did start working out, and I am eating healthier.
BUT – I didn’t even finish four chapters in my book ( in the last six months!!!!), and I haven’t doubled down my productivity and am still carrying a lot of bad habits regarding persistency and deadlines.
So I’ve decided that instead of waiting for 2017 and making new years resolutions – I’m taking action now.
I won’t go into any in-depth details here (I will tomorrow probably) but I do want to share a key insight that I loved and had affected me immediately.
Change the way you make decisions
To re-focus myself and recheck to why I’m postponing doing what I promised myself I would, I resisted Tony Robbins book “Awaken the Giant within” (Also, check his new documentary on Netflix, it’s inspiring).
I know a lot of people are suspicious of the “Tony Robbins’” out there, but I’m a big fan and taking his advice has changed my life in the past.
In his “Awaken the giant within”, Robbins talks about decision making as a driving force.
- He says three interesting things:
Decision making is a muscle – If you don’t use it, it will become harder for you to make decisions and you’ll make weak ones – I tend to agree with this notion. Which is counterintuitive to all these articles recommending you to avoid decision making so you wouldn’t suffer from decision fatigue. - Change happens in a second.
Getting to the point where you decide you want to change, that takes a long time. I love it because I can relate to it. The process we’re all talking about is “deciding you had enough” of something, but taking action takes seconds. It gives you the freedom to make rapid changes and not procrastinate on the deliverables of your decisions. - Once you’ve made a decision – do it in a way you can’t come back from it. Cut out all other options and be focused on the decision you’ve made. Don’t linger on the “what if’s” once you made.
The decision-making process – simplified
Tony breaks down the decision-making process we make daily to 3 parts:
- What do I want to focus on at the moment – Where’s my focal area?
- How do I feel about what’s happening right now – Is it good? Bad? Don’t care about it enough?
- What’s next? What is the action I’m about to take based on the first two answers?
This process shouldn’t be very long, and you should practice it daily – from making big decisions to small ones.
The most important about utilizing this process is that it raises awareness to the amount of choice and moments in life when you can make a choice and change your life accordingly.
Here’s simple every day (non-business) example:
I decided that I’m trying to lead a healthier lifestyle. So I stopped drinking soda, milk, etc. I still do from time to time, but my efforts are on quitting it entirely (done that for a while and recently relapsed).
So when you’re on a diet and see a cookie /something you shouldn’t eat and feel that you “must have it.” Refer to the three steps process.
- Should I focus on me being impulsive and eat that cookie? Or should I focus on the fact that I want to eat healthier and if I eat this cookie that makes me break my promise to myself?
- How would I feel about breaking that promise?
- Maybe I should choose to put that cookie down.
Now to you
Try making five conscious decisions today and tell me in the comments – do you feel more empowered? Do you feel like you have more control now over your life?
Tomorrow I’ll write about the steps that I’m personally taking and committing too.