Change the Trajectory of Your Life

A little kid walks into a candy store with his dad and was amazed by the variety of treats to choose from.

 

“What should I choose? What should I choose? What should I choose?” He asked himself.

 

“Come on son, we don’t have all day,” his dad said.

 

“These are my favorites. No wait, these are my favorites.” He walked along the aisles, picking up bags and putting them back. He just couldn’t make up his mind.

 

“Come on son, make up your mind, we have to go,” his impatient dad said.

 

Frantically, the boy ran around the store, his eyes moving from one shelf to another, but all of the options looked so good and he couldn’t make a decision.

 

Eventually, the dad had enough, grabbed his son by the hand and they walked out of the store empty-handed. The young boy had tears in his eyes. He wanted them all, but ended up with nothing because he couldn’t choose just one.

 

At some point or another we have all been that little kid. The world we live in is that candy store and sadly, some people never do decide.

 

There are a ton of decisions to be made but if we don’t make a decision about our career, education, relationships, investments, church or other important issues, we end up empty-handed. 

 

Sometimes we worry about making the wrong choice so we just decide to delay the decision. Well, that delay is a decision. It’s a decision to not decide and that is almost always the wrong decision.

 

You are perhaps only one decision away from changing the entire trajectory of your life. If you’re not where you want to be it’s likely because of decisions you’ve made in the past or perhaps you’re where you are because of decisions you didn’t make. 

 

If you’ve hesitated to make that decision then that’s on you. It’s your life, you should be deciding as much as possible who and what is in it. 

 

Deciding isn’t all that hard. Making a decision however can be very challenging. What’s the difference you ask…well deciding is choosing to do something. Making a decision is actually doing it. 

 

No matter what you decide it’s not really a decision until you take action to make it happen. Good intentions are not a decision. 

 

Making a decision requires discipline. Discipline is best described as wanting something more tomorrow than the something you want today. Think of it like this: you want to weigh less tomorrow but you have ice cream in the freezer today. If your desire to weigh less is greater than your desire for ice cream then you’ll avoid the freezer. If not, well then enjoy the ice cream. 

 

Good decisions come from discipline. Bad decisions frequently come from a lack of discipline.


When you’re ready to change the trajectory of your life you’ll find the discipline you need to do it. Don’t just decide to do something, make the decision to actually do it. 


8 thoughts on “Change the Trajectory of Your Life

  1. Thanks Steve for this post and the excellent example. What makes the lack of making a decision even more severe is when managers fail making decisions. When all options are kept “open” the impacted people in the organisation are without direction. Bit by bit they are running more frantically from option to option, trying to keep all of them possible and alive. It is not only very exhausting to the individuals – it leads to neglecting the option(s) that are important to follow, to support and make a success on oganisational level. If we decide not to decide, we ultimately decide to fail.

    1. Thanks Claudia, I agree, it is often when we “decide to not decide” that we fail. I smiled when I saw your “keeping our options open” line cause I used to work with someone who believed that was actually possible. He had no idea how many options went away just by failing to make a decision. Authentic leaders are required to decide, not keep all options on the table.

      1. Hi Steve,
        I was smiling when I read about your experience with someone who believed it was possible to “keep all options open”. It is an experience I have made as well and I share the observation that this leads to opportunities being missed. And I love the phrase that “Authentic leaders are required to decide, not keep all options on the table.“
        … I wonder if I shall carve that in stone …

  2. Once, a friend told me the word decide was like homicide… we must kill all the other options. The “cide” means to cut off. For some, the hardest thing isn’t choosing or acting, it’s killing all the other options.

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