Free Motivation Newsletter | Home Your Power To Decide
by Asoka Selvarajah, Ph.D
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 laboring 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 light bulb
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 decision 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 favorites 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 2004. All
Rights Reserved.
_____________ Dr. Asoka Selvarajah is an active author/researcher on personal development and esoteric spirituality. Asoka's work helps people achieve their full potential, deepen their understanding of mystical truth, and find joy in their true soul's purpose. He is author of " The 7 Golden Secrets To Knowing Your Higher Self". Enjoy spiritual, mental, emotional and physical abundance. Access inner guidance and discover your life purpose.
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