In his classic work, “Think & Grow Rich”, Napoleon Hill stated
that 98% of people are in the jobs they have through INDECISION,
i.e. because they never made the decision about what they wanted
to do in their lives in the first place. Sadly, nearly a century
later, we can say exactly the same thing.
Decision is the key to transformation. Yet, most of us never
learn this from our parents, from school, or indeed from anywhere
else. It is one of the key character traits distinguishing high
performers from the vast ranks of the mediocre. Can you DECIDE
upon anything? If you can, almost anything you want in life can
be yours.
If you think back in your life to some of your greatest
achievements, those things you are most proud of, you will see
that behind it all there was a decision you made at some point,
and persisted with against all opposition, right through to the
successful conclusion.
For me, it was the three tortuous years I spent labouring away on
my Ph.D, doing a subject that was so complex that after a while,
all I had left was persistence and determination to see the
decision I had made through to its final conclusion.
Indecision explains why many people feel that they have a life
purpose, but have no idea what it is. We have lost the use of the
decision muscles that should normally enable us to manifest into
our reality what we decide upon, and persistently hold in our
minds. Ask a child what it wants to have and you’ll get a long
list. Ask an adult the same question and you may well be greeted
with silence.
The problem is that all too often that people hunger for instant
gratification. The ability to engage in delayed gratification,
i.e. working hard for a goal NOW in order to see it realized at
some point in the future, seems to be a dying art. Hence our
ability to make decisions and see them through to a fruitful end
has grown very weak. For many people, the biggest decisions they
ever make in a year is where to go on vacation, how to get there,
and where to stay! Sad but true.
Decision is, by definition, behind every truly great achievement
anyone ever makes. Most of the people who live to be a hundred
actually DECIDED at some point in their life that they wished to
live to a hundred. Most millionaires, at some earlier point in
their life (often when they were heavily in debt), DECIDED that
they were going to be millionaires. The Buddha’s enlightenment
came only after he DECIDED to seek Enlightenment and persisted
for six long hard years until the achieved it. Edison DECIDED to
invent an electric lightbulb and persisted despite 10,000 failed
attempts.
Decision coupled with Persistence is unstoppable. Napoleon Hill
also commented that, in examining the lives of Thomas Edison and
Henry Ford, the only quality he found in them that remotely
accounted for their success, i.e. was NOT common in ordinary
people, was that of Persistence.
Interestingly, the most successful people make decisions quickly
and change them slowly. They persist with the decisions they have
made. However, failures are very slow to make any decision at all
(most never make any), and they change the ones they have made
very rapidly indeed. Which description applies to you?….
It’s not about making the “right” decision in the first place,
but rather about making the decision you have made “right”. If
you wait to make the “right” decision, you could wait forever. If
you make your decisions “right”, this means that you work with
the decisions you have made, adapting them as necessary to the
situation at hand.
Yes, of course it helps to make the best decision possible in the
first place. This is where excellent research and accurate
thinking come into play. You should do your best in this respect.
However, you also need to set some sort of deadline or limit to
this to be prevented from engaging in “paralysis through
analysis”. At some point, you have to DO. Thereafter, you adapt
your thinking to actual circumstances, in order to ultimately
bring about what you have decided upon.
For instance, you may decide to live to be a hundred. However,
you then work with the existing health systems available to reach
that goal, adapting and choosing what is available to your
personal needs. You may decide to earn a certain sum of money,
e.g. a million dollars. From then on, you adapt your thinking to
the many means available.
You don’t give up on the decisionn itself, although you may give
up on a specific means of achieving it, and instead move towards
another. Flexibility in the means of obtaining the outcome of
your decision is okay. Flexibility in dumping your decisions the
whole time is NOT.
The Latin root of the word decision means “to cut off from all
alternatives”. This is what you should do when you decide. Don’t
leave yourself a life-raft so that you can give up later. A
famous example of this kind of decision is Hernan Cortez, in his
conquest of Mexico. When the Conquistadors first arrived in
Mexico, Cortez literally DID burn their boats. There was no way
back home. They could literally only go forward and conquer. That
is how just a few hundred Spaniards, thousands of miles from
home, took on, and triumphed over, the power of the Aztec and
Mayan Empires. Decision!
Decide, and then act as if you could not fail. Interestingly,
this attitude of mind attracts to you forces from the universe
that are fully capable of supporting you and bringing your
decision into manifestation. If you ask a lot from life, you will
receive a lot. If you ask a little, that is what you will get.
Interestingly, the universe has no favourites and does not care
either way how much or how little you ask for. As and you shall
receive, is the way it was once expressed.
The key is to KNOW what you want, DECIDE to get it, and then
PERSIST until you have done so.
Copyright Asoka Selvarajah 2005. All Rights Reserved.
_______________________________________________________________
Asoka Selvarajah is a writer on personal growth and spirituality, and the author of “The 7 Golden Secrets To Knowing Your Higher Self”. His work helps people achieve their full potential, deepen their understanding of mystical truth, and discover their soul’s purpose. You can subscribe to his FREE ezine, and get his FREE ebook “Inner Light Outer Wealth” at:
http://www.aksworld.com/AspireToWisdom.htm?imk=Blog _______________________________________________________________
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Your Power To Decide To Change EverythingYour Power To Decide To Change Everything
