According to Bob Proctor there is a single mental move you can make that will solve enormous problems for you in a millisecond. “It has the potential to improve almost any personal or business situation you will ever encounter, and it could propel you down the path to incredible success. We have a name for this magic mental activity. It is called DECISION.”
The world’s most successful people share a common quality: they make decisions. Decision makers go to the top, and those who do not make decisions seem to go nowhere. Decisions, or the lack of them, are responsible for the breaking or making of careers.
People who have become proficient at making decisions without being influenced by the opinions of others are the people whose annual incomes fall in the high category. People who have never developed the mental strength to make these vital moves are relegated to the lower-income ranks for their whole careers.
Decisions affect more than just your income; they dominate your whole life. The health of your mind and body, the well-being of your family, your social life, and the type of relationships you develop all depend upon your ability to make sound decisions. Since decision-making has such far-reaching power, you would think that it would be taught in every school, but it is not. Decision-making is missing from the curricula of almost all of our formal educational institutions. To compound the problem, it has been left out of virtually all of the training and human-resource development programmes in the corporate world.
Proctor opines that it is not difficult to learn how to make wise decisions. “With the proper information and by subjecting yourself to certain disciplines, you can become a very proficient and effective decision maker, and the people who become effective at decision making receive a big share of the world’s rewards.”
Decision-making is a mental discipline you can master. It could be compared to a number of other mental disciplines like thinking, imagining, or concentrating. Each one, when developed, brings with it tremendous rewards. You can virtually eliminate conflict and confusion in your life by becoming proficient at making decisions.
Decision-making brings order to your mind, and of course, this order is then reflected in your objective world: your results. James Allen might have been thinking of decisions when he wrote, “We think in secret, and it comes to pass: environment is but our looking glass.” No one can see you making decisions, but they will usually see the results of your decisions.
The person who fails to develop the ability to make decisions is doomed, because indecision sets up internal conflicts, which can escalate without warning into all-out mental and emotional wars. Psychiatrists have a name to describe these internal wars. It is ambivalence – it is the coexistence in one person of opposite feelings toward the same objective.
You are going to have difficulty in your life if you permit your mind to remain ambivalent for any period. The person who does will become despondent and virtually incapable of any type of productive activity. A decision, or a series of decisions, would change everything.
Everyone has experienced these feelings of ambivalence on occasion. If this happens to you frequently, decide right now to stop it. The cause of ambivalence is indecision, but keep in mind that the truth is not always in the appearance of things. Indecision is a cause of ambivalence, but it is a secondary cause. It is not the primary cause.
Low self-esteem or a lack of confidence is the real culprit here. For over a quarter of a century, Proctor has been studying the behavior of people who have become proficient at making decisions. They all have one thing in common: they have a very strong self-image, a high degree of self-esteem. They may be as different in numerous other respects, but they all possess confidence. Decision makers are not afraid of making an error. When they make an error in their decision or fail at something, they have the ability to shrug it off. They learn from the experience, but they never submit to the failure.
Money has nothing to do with making decisions. Once you make the decision, you will find the money every time. Never let money enter your mind when deciding whether you will or will not do something. Whether you can afford it or not should never be a consideration. Whether you want it or not is the only consideration. “You can afford anything. There is an infinite supply of money. All of the money in the world is available to you when the decision is firmly made. If you need the money, you will attract it.”
Proctor accepts that any number of people will say this is absurd; you cannot just decide to do something if you do not have the necessary resources. “That is fine if that is the way they choose to think, but that is a very limiting way of thinking. In truth, it is probably not thinking at all. It is very likely just an opinion that was inherited from an older member of their family who did not think either.”
Thinking is very important. Decision makers are great thinkers. Do you ever consider your thoughts and how they affect your life? Although this should be one of our most serious considerations, unfortunately for many people, it is not.
Only a very small, select few attempt to control or govern their thoughts. Anyone who has made a study of the great thinkers, the decision makers, the achievers of history, will know they very rarely agreed on anything about human life. However, there was one point on which they were in complete and unanimous agreement, and that was that we become what we think about. Our thoughts ultimately control every decision we make. You are the sum total of your thoughts.
The greatest obstacle you will ever encounter when making important decisions in your life is circumstance. We let circumstance get us off the hook when we should be giving it everything we have. More dreams are shattered and goals lost because of circumstance than because of any other single factor. Circumstances may cause a detour in your life, but you should never permit them to stop you from making important decisions. Napoleon said, “Circumstances—I make them.”
Many misguided individuals try something once or twice, and if they do not hit the bull’s-eye, they feel they are a failure. Failing does not make anyone a failure, but quitting most certainly does, and quitting is a decision. By following that reasoning, you would have to say that when you make a decision to quit, you make a decision to fail.
Charles Kettering said, “When you are inventing, if you fail 999 times and succeed once, you are in.” That is true of just about any activity you can name. The world will soon forget your failures in light of your achievements. Do not worry about failing. It will toughen you up and get you ready for the big win. Winning is a decision.
At 91, J.C. Penney was asked how his eyesight was. He replied that his sight was failing, but his vision had never been better.
When your vision is clear, it becomes easy to make decisions. But when a person has no vision of a better way of life, they automatically shut themselves in a prison. They limit themselves to a life without hope.
This frequently happens when someone has seriously tried to win on a number of occasions, only to meet with failure time after time. Repeated failures can damage a person’s self-image and cause them to lose sight of their potential. They therefore make a decision to give up and resign themselves to their fate.
Take the first step in predicting your own prosperous future. Build a mental picture of exactly how you would like to live. Make a firm decision to hold on to that vision, and positive ways to improve everything will begin to flow into your mind.
BY CAPT SAM ADDAIH (RTD)
