“To see the world, things dangerous to come to, to see behind walls, draw closer, to find each other and to feel. That is the purpose of life” James Thurber – The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty.
Life is about making decisions. It’s about deciding to act or how to act.
Taking an important decision is never easy. Our past, our friends, our financial situation and any other
outside factors could play a role and determine which way we might take.
When deciding whether or not it is time for you to quite you job and start you own business, if it’s time to sell all your belongings and travel the world, and when making any other life changing decisions, remember these 4 steps and principles, they might help you see the whole thing differently.
When making a decision, forget the right way.
The right way is the one that works. Keep your goals in mind and decide what needs to be done to achieve them, and do that.
A good example is the story of Zemurray, a Russian immigrant who started with nothing and created a business on the inefficiencies of the larger corporations, and competed with the biggest company in the fruit business. Which he eventually conquered.
When the land he needed to grow bananas was in the center of an ownership dispute, he paid both owners the full price to get it faster than his competitors, who spent months hiring expensive lawyers to figure out who was the “real owner” of the land and pay a “fair” price.
Always keep you goals in mind. The vision of where you want to go or what you want to be is the greatest asset you have.
Start taking bad decisions. This will take you to places you’ve never been.
If you always take the safe and the right decisions, like everybody else – you will end up where everybody is.
And that’s not where you want to be right?
Make sure at least once a month, someone says that what you are doing is crazy. This will keep you on the right track.
As Robert Greene said in the 48 Laws Of Power:
“The World wants to assign you a role in life. Once you accept it, you are doomed”.
Go out there and look for troubles. Look for things that will make you uncomfortable.
These are the things that will make you grow.
Just start somewhere. Whatever you have in mind, whatever you want to do – start building it, start creating it. Start now.
It will never be the perfect time to do it, so might as well start now.
Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn puts it this way:
“If you are not ashamed of your first product, you launched too late.”
This really got me thinking when I first heard it. You just need to do it, then fix it as you go.
Stop thinking about all the things you need to change, do or that can’t be done. Just start and you’ll find out soon enough.
In every situation, there is only one variable that is 100% up to us:
The way we decide to react to it.
We don’t know what’s going to happen to us, we can not control it. So stop thinking about it. Be prepared but don’t become obsessive about it.
Next time something happens, just stop and decide the way you will act, react and feel about the situation.
Decide to be OK with what others do.
Your decisions will take you to places you decided to go to so don’t envy where others are standing, they made their own decisions to be there.
Ryan Holiday talks about not feeling inferior for not having something you deliberately chose not to pursue.
If you chose freedom over money, don’t feel bad if one of your friends is getting a new car every year. You made the decisions to have and pursue something else.
Don’t feel bad because you don’t have what others have, want or are pursuing.
Again, keep your goals in mind.