Becoming More Decisive

Decisions, decisions, decisions!

Maybe it's selecting what to order from an extensive restaurant menu. Or choosing which event to attend when two are happening at the same time. We are faced with many decisions every day. Hundreds of them, if you really stop to think about it.

Some of them are easy, like what to have for breakfast or what to wear (that one is generally easier for men than women, in my experience).

Other decisions are more involved. They may require gathering additional information or input from others.

One thing that is clear about highly productive and successful people is that they are good at making decisions. They make decisions in a timely manner, and deal with the outcomes as they occur.

To Decide Or Not To Decide

I don't know about you, but I am not a very good decision maker.

I can handle the easy stuff. In fact, I am pretty productive person and make lots of decisions that I can implement myself.

But when it comes to things that require the involvement of other people or more coordination, I struggle.

I get too wrapped up in the different possibilities. I magnify the things that need to happen in order to gather the appropriate information or to execute the decision. I worry way too much about making the wrong decision. (And later I beat myself up for making wrong decisions, or not making the right one soon enough.)

What happens is I freeze.

I do nothing. I wait to see if things will just "work themselves out."

And here's the thing. Stuff does actually work out one way or another. Days continue to go by. But there isn't a lot of change or growth that happens if you are frozen.

Being wrong

In order to become more decisive, I have to accept the possibility of being wrong.

I mean, no one can be right 100% of the time. We're human beings, and we make bad decisions all the time. It's not the end of the world.

Plus, a lot of decisions don't really have a "right" or "wrong," just different outcomes. Trade offs. Maybe several outcomes are good, just in different ways. Maybe none of the outcomes are good, but you have to choose one anyway (I hate those kind!!)

Making decisions takes a strength of character that can manage the outcomes, no matter what they might be.

Each year I choose a word to guide my actions, priorities and growth. This year, my word is decisiveness.

I will be working to improve my ability to make decisions with wisdom and courage. How about you? Could you be a little more decisive in your life and your business? Do you tend to freeze when faced with difficult situations? Maybe you have a different relationship with decisiveness. I think this is a valuable area to explore and discuss, so share your thoughts in the comments.

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How To Ride The Wave Of A Positive Thought

What were you thinking a moment ago?

Was it positive, uplifting or dis-empowering?

Notice your feelings generated by the thoughts.

Are they pleasant, neutral or disagreeable?

If you're able to move your attention to your emotions, congratulations, you know how to ride the wave of a positive thought.

What do I mean by that?

If you observe a surfer on a wave, you'll notice it will turn into a large swell at one point. With enough momentum it surges into a larger wave, carrying the surfer to the shoreline.

Thoughts come and go from the landscape of your mind like ocean waves. New thoughts enter your stream of consciousness every one second. This means thoughts don't last, unless you direct your attention towards specific ones.

We live in the feelings of our thoughts, not the outside circumstances that influence them. External conditions do not impose upon your thinking, however it can produce an emotional response if the stimuli is strong enough.

"Truth is: Getting stopped by a thought, negative or positive, lays the groundwork for any disconcerting experience. It's never what we think, but that we think that gets us into hot water," affirms sports psychologist Garret Kramer in, The Path of No Resistance: Why Overcoming is Simpler than You Think.

Some days a thought produces a negative emotion while other days it's insignificant.

Why?

What has changed apart from the day?

We react to our surroundings on those occasions for unknown reasons, i.e. tired, moody, hungry, etc. At that time we're ruled by our thinking more so.

Your mind doesn't differentiate between a positive or negative thought. It doesn't register them in this manner - but you do, as the observer. When we label thoughts, we assign them importance over others, so they occupy space in our minds.

I want to be clear: You are not your thoughts.

You are not your thoughts, because they appear and dissolve from your mind and none are permanent. They may be repeated often, but they are never permanent. To imply you are what you think is misleading, to the degree you might experience a positive thought one moment and a negative one the next. If you are defined by that distinction, who are you according to this narrative?

If we live in the feelings of our thoughts and experience an anxious thought, it doesn't imply you're an anxious person. It means you experienced a thought which produced anxiety in your body. You may have an illuminating thought the next moment which cancels the earlier one. There are exceptions of course, governed by a clinical diagnosis by a trained mental health professional.

So the question arises, who are you then?

Garret Kramer affirms once more, "All you really need to do is leave your thoughts alone. Why? Because when left alone, as we've seen, all thoughts are impotent. You're free to excel no matter when or where a negative, or even a positive, thought invades your brain."

The key to overcome unwelcomed thoughts is not to eject them from your mind, but to be mindful of them. Approximately 50,000 - 70,000 thoughts pass through your mind every day. Thoughts flood into your consciousness on a moment-to-moment basis, like a TV show streamed online.

If thoughts flow into our consciousness, how can we reduce the impact of the negative ones?

By being mindful of disempowering thoughts, you bring them to the forefront of your mind and become conscious, rather than unconscious of them.

Unconscious thoughts are part of the landscape of our minds. Similar to streaming a TV show on a computer, you can be distracted by a pop-up window selling you a product or service. Your intention is to view the show, yet the distraction pulls you away from it. Unconscious thoughts have the same effect. They emerge from nowhere and can lead us to dark places if we're unaware.

"The pain that you create now is always some form of nonacceptance, some form of

unconscious resistance to what is. On the level of thought, the resistance is some form of

judgment. On the emotional level, it is some form of negativity. The intensity of the pain depends on the degree of resistance to the present moment, and this in turn depends on how strongly you are identified with your mind," states author Eckhart Tolle.

The key is to recognise our unconscious thoughts without invoking negative feelings or adding a narrative. We do so by witnessing them through the eyes of equanimity, instead of reacting with negative emotions or actions.

To ride the wave of positive thought, first note the feelings produced in your body. Note your emotional response without becoming invested in them.

Eckhart Tolle states, "Emotion arises at the place where mind and body meet. It is the body's reaction to your mind - or you might say, a reflection of your mind in the body."

Empowering thoughts have an enriching quality, demonstrating they are in harmony and balance. Thoughts that produce an uncomfortable sensation, is your body's way of showing you they are out of alignment.

In this setting, the body is a feedback instrument informing you of your thinking.

You needn't be attentive to every thought. Yet, if you're aware how those thoughts generate positive or negative emotions, it's possible to choose more balanced thoughts.

When an inspiring thought emerges, move into your body and notice your emotional response.

Is it in your chest, stomach or elsewhere?

How does it feel?

Is it a tingling sensation that radiates or does it move to other regions?

Meditation is useful when sitting with your thoughts in a quiet setting. Even as little as five minutes in silence helps you become acquainted with your thoughts, instead of passing through your mind without conscious awareness.

To ride the wave of a positive thought, note the feelings they produce while shifting your awareness to them.

As you witness your thoughts, your awareness observes them thus diminishing their intensity.

In time, you create longer streams of positive thoughts, having become familiar with their ebb and flow.

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How to Find Willpower When You’re Running On Empty

Have you ever tried to notice and track acts of will that you perform throughout your day?

That time when you decide to reject the offer of cigarette that comes from your friend. Maybe that morning you finally took yourself for a work-out routine.

Where do such acts come from?

Why in some cases are you resistant to any kind of temptations and just do what is right/logical/useful while in other cases you just can’t stand up to the seduction?

How to Find Willpower When It’s Running Out

Is there a limited resource of willpower for each of us?

And, if it’s true, can we somehow increase it or should we just stick with it like that chewing gum that has stuck to our shoe sole on the way to work. We can take time and fix that, but we have work to do and we are in a hurry.


Flexing The Muscle

“WILLPOWER IS LIKE A MUSCLE: IT NEEDS TO BE CHALLENGED TO BUILD ITSELF.” – MARTIN GINIS

If neuroscience has taught us something about our brain lately – it’s that it is no different than any other muscle in our body (except it’s unimaginably complex!).

If you have ever been to gym – you know how it works. Weak muscles won’t let you lift decent weights, the same thing basically happens to your brain when it is required to show some willpower.

There is a part of the brain called the prefrontal cortex, it is located just behind your forehead and it’s believed to be responsible for behavior regulation and decision-making.

In easy words, that part of your brain is literally the willpower mission control center, and when you can’t handle the desire to eat one more sausage you know what is it to blame.


But how that does that help?

Well, knowing how an engine works gives you an opportunity to tweak and upgrade it.

According to Kelly McGonigal, Stanford University PhD, and author of The Willpower Instinct, the pre-frontal cortex is like a child that needs to be looked after.


You have to be responsible and fully involved in order to raise it properly, so you won’t feel embarrassed for it. There are things you can do to improve the pre-frontal cortex. Following them will literally increase it by consolidating grey matter around it.

As a result, you will gain a power to control over your desires and to act upon the interest of usefulness and healthiness. Instead of receiving a short-term sense of satisfaction. The basic recommendation break-down is:

1. Sleep well.
It is a well-known fact. Your whole organism restores and gathers power while sleeping and willpower is no different. You are very vulnerable to bad habits and other possible threats when you didn’t get enough sleep.

2. Eat well.

Digestion of proper food will supply your brain with necessary vitamins and minerals. Food is a fuel so be sure to keep the tank properly filled.

3. Exercise.

Physical exercises are proven not only to increase your body condition, but weekly exercise activities are experimentally proven to be a boost to your willpower as well.

4. Meditate.

Just a simple 10-minute breath meditation daily routine has proven to improve your body and mind on a many different levels. From improving your focus level to helping your sleep better, meditation has become a powerful tool to anyone seeking to increase their willpower reserve.

Following basic guidelines will definitely boost your self-awareness and the willpower itself. But what do you do when you seem to be out of the resource?


In Search Of A Willpower Boost Pack

Remember what we talked about earlier? About the comparison of our brain to muscles. Now that we know, it seems clear that we can “work out” and get our brain to consolidate the willpower at the times when it is most needed.

We just need to keep practising and pushing it to the limit.

Well, the truth is, it’s not quite right. The resource of your willpower is never unlimited. Especially on your first steps of mastering your willpower, you can easily find yourself in the situation when you are just out of it.

Once you learned how exactly your mind works when you are eating that caramel cake or passing a gym class you would need to learn how to force yourself doing the right thing.

But the problem is that you might face numerous situations throughout your day that would require you to challenge your power of will in order to motivate yourself.

If you’ll be too hard on that, you might just pass one through. You would think – I woke up early, I am not smoking for three weeks now and I laid out on a training today. So this sweet dessert after supper won’t cross out all my achievements.

And you’re right. You can’t be all-focused and determined non-stop 24/7. In this case, one day you would just have to give it a rest in order to release the tension that is tangling you.


So What Do We Do?

In order to avoid that, you need to carefully examine the level of your willpower. Evaluate how much is left in your willpower bank. That would enable you to plan your decisions and actions ahead of the challenges you face.

Becoming aware of the level of willpower you have gives you a chance to avoid seductions and temptations you might face later. For example, if you know that just can’t fight that social media feed checking habit, maybe you could try leaving the phone somewhere not near your workplace.

The other recommendation I would give is an obvious one, though it is also one of the hardest.

Once you have started working on improving your power of will, never let it go. Keep the focus and determination to fight your nasty habits for quite some time. Until you’ve worked out the manner to deal with them.

For example, at some point of my life I had a serious sleep deprivation problem. It was doing severe damage to my personal and professional life, so I had to do something about it.

Amongst all the solutions I tried, meditation was something that really worked, though I had to wait more than a month to see that. But, at some point, my sleep problems were just gone.

Everything went back to normal. And when everything is normal there is no need to make additional efforts to keep it that way, I thought. So I stopped meditating just to see that the problem came back.

That’s when I realized that I should always be focused and determined to steer my life in the right direction.


Drawing The Bottom Line

There is always a way to go when it comes to self-improvement, for all of us. Willpower is the most effective tool on the forefront of our personal growth and development.

While there are literal ways of improving your willpower, you should never forget that there is a resource that you are spending, especially on your first steps of mastering the power of will.

Are you struggling to find willpower? Leave a comment below.

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