I started rereading Awaken The Gian Within today, and in the process “rerealized” the importance of decisions in the process of making changes in your life.
This is more for my own benefit than anyone else’s really, but if you get anything from the highlights of this chapter alone, make sure to check out the book, it has the potential of being rather life-changing.
Highlights From Chapter 2: Decisions: The Pathway To Power
- “How am I going to live the next ten years of my life? How am I going to live today in order to create the tomorrow I’m committed to? What am I going to stand for from now on? What’s important to me right now, and what will be important to me in the long term? What actions can I take today that will shape my ultimate destiny?
- Now is the time to design the next ten years of your life—not once they’re over.
- The difference in the results that people produce comes down to what they’ve done differently from others in the same situations. Different actions produce different results.
- In essence, if we want to direct our lives, we must take control of our consistent actions. It’s not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives, but what we do consistently.
- More than anything else, I believe it’s our decisions, not the conditions of our lives, that determine our destiny.
- If you don’t make decisions about how you’re going to live, then you’ve already made a decision, haven’t you? You’re making a decision to be directed by the environment instead of shaping your own destiny.
- Not only do you have to decide what results you are committed to, but also the kind of person that you’re committed to becoming.
- If you don’t set a baseline standard for what you’ll accept in your life, you’ll find it’s easy to slip into behaviors and attitudes or a quality of life that’s far below what you deserve. You need to set and live by these standards no matter what happens in your life.
- Using the power of decision gives you the capacity to get past any excuse to change any and every part of your life in an instant. It can change your relationships, your working environment, your level of physical fitness, your income, and your emotional states. It can determine whether you’re happy or sad, whether you’re frustrated or excited, enslaved by circumstances, or expressing your freedom. It’s the source of change within an individual, a family, a community, a society, our world.
- If you truly decide to, you can do almost anything.
- True decisions are the catalyst for turning our dreams into reality.
- Will today be the day you finally decide that who you are as a person is much more than you’ve been demonstrating? Will today be the day you decide once and for all to make your life consistent with the quality of your spirit? Then start by proclaiming, “This is who I am. This is what my life is about. And this is what I’m going to do. Nothing will stop me from achieving my destiny. I will not be denied! “
- What could you do with your life if you really decided to?
- It’s not important initially to know how you’re going to create a result. What’s important is to decide you will find a way, no matter what.
- 1) Decide what you want, 2) Take action, 3) Notice what’s working or not, and 4) Change your approach until you achieve what you want.
- As soon as you truly commit to making something happen, the “how” will reveal itself.
- Making a true decision means committing to achieving a result, and then cutting yourself off from any other possibility.
- The way to make better decisions is to make more of them. Then make sure you learn from each one, including those that don’t seem to work out in the short term: they will provide valuable distinctions to make better evaluations and therefore decisions in the future.
- Information is power when it’s acted upon, and one of my criteria for a true decision is that action flows from it.
- Remember that repetition is the mother of skill.
- The three decisions that control your destiny are: 1. Your decisions about what to focus on. 2. Your decisions about what things mean to you. 3. Your decisions about what to do to create the results you desire.
- Know that if anyone is enjoying greater success than you in any area, they’re making these three decisions differently from you in some context or situation.
- Your brain has already constructed an internal system for making decisions.
- This system is comprised of five components: 1) your core beliefs and unconscious rules, 2) your life values, 3) your references, 4) the habitual questions that you ask yourself, and 5) the emotional states you experience in each moment.
- We must overcome our fears of making the wrong decisions.
- Success truly is the result of good judgment. Good judgment is the result of experience, and experience is often the result of bad judgment!
- There are no failures in life. There are only results. If you didn’t get the results you wanted, learn from this experience so that you have references about how to make better decisions in the future.
- There’s nothing you can’t accomplish if: 1) You clearly decide what it is that you’re absolutely committed to achieving, 2) You are willing to take massive action, 3) You notice what’s working or not, and 4) You continue to change your approach until you achieve what you want, using whatever life gives you along the way.
- Sometimes when you make a decision and take action, in the short term it may look like it’s not working. In order to succeed, you must have a long-term focus.
- Success and failure are not overnight experiences. It’s all the small decisions along the way that cause people to fail.
- Deciding to commit yourself to long-term results, rather than short-term fixes, is as important as any decision you’ll make in your lifetime. Failing to do this can cause not only massive financial or societal pain, but sometimes even the ultimate personal pain.
- The hardest step in achieving anything is making a true commitment—a true decision.
- A critical rule I’ve made for myself is never to leave the scene of a decision without first taking a specific action toward its realization.