Decision-making is hallmarked by choice, but witnessed by action-steps.
Randi Levin
Yep. Decision-making is tough stuff. Yet, if you want to improve your view, you need to make choices that support that vision for change. Seeking clarity in your business? Change something. Looking to rebuild a relationship? Approach it from a different perspective. Want more motivation? Shift what you are focusing on.
Decision-making is hallmarked by choice, but witnessed by action-steps. It is not enough to think about a better understanding, or the single objective of getting your goals. Instead, you need to invest real-life time and energy into making your ideas come to life. In the blurry, they evaporate, in clarity they expand.
So, how do you do this? How do you expand upon clarity? Start by shifting your language about what is currently unknown. Everything you now do was once unknown. You were not born knowing. You learned everything. Essentially, you were born blurry! More and more clarity came to you with each thing that you experienced, with every new experience that you mastered, and with your ability to choose amongst all the various items available to you on the menu of your life.
While there are no hidden secrets to acquiring an unobstructed and clear view on your business or your life, there are a few mindset resets that allow you to recalibrate from blurry to clear and from uncertainty and indecision into action and results.
Manage the Moment
It is yesterday that needs clarity and tomorrow that seems fuzzy. Today, however, is manageable and malleable from a different vantage point. There are things you can do in today that are just not possible to be done at any other point in time. Today is tomorrow’s success. Today shapes and reshapes everything because in today, anything is possible. How can you stay in an active and energized conversation with yourself in today? Today is where choices are born and changes are enabled. If you manage the moment, you lead your life. Best part? All you need is your calendar. Change one thing. Schedule it right on your calendar so that this “meeting” happens. Rinse and repeat your choices in the 24-hour window you are in and you customize and create a life you love. Keep it going. Visualize it as if it is done. See yourself doing it. Lean into the action.
Give Yourself Options
Create a small but meaningful menu of potential solutions or reframes to ease into decision-making. Very often choice appears to be between this OR that. Shift your mindset by listing a variety of options to any given situation or problem. Then choose between this AND that. While the word “or” limits you, “and” expands and empowers you. Feeling stuck? Ask yourself, “And what else?” Your answer will shed new light and uncover fresh perspective in regard to opportunities and choices that you may not have thought about before. When you don’t have to limit yourself, you are free to explore and to grow. Make sure to edit out the noise so that you can reveal what really matters.
Get a Little Closer
If you are too far away from a situation, it is often difficult to fully visualize and optimize goals and solutions. So, step a little closer. Allow yourself to shed perfection for the day and get messy with trying on different alternatives. If you could not read the label on a box of cereal, you would move it closer to you in order to see it better, or you would put on your glasses so that your focus was clearer and crisper. The same is true with every situation in your life. Change the vantage point and you alter your vision. Start by getting out of your own way. Instead of assuming that you “have to” do things, recalibrate your thoughts as to what you “get to do” instead. Decision-making from a place of gratitude organically simplifies and highlights what is essential to you. Getting a bit closer allows you to hone in on the experience you may have been avoiding and to crystalize new, clearer decisions.