Start Making Decisions on Purpose, Deliberately

First, I’ll Put My Money Where My Mouth Is

The image in this post is the house I will be buying this year. In fact, I am determined that we will be celebrating my daughter’s birthday in this house at the end of August. The decision has been made. We picked this house about a year and a half ago, and all this time, we have put off the idea of buying it because we don’t have the money. We use “not having the money” as an excuse to avoid doing what we need to do to get the money.

If you’ve looked around this web site, you may have noticed the block on the right with Bob Proctor’s Six Minutes to Success program. I cannot tell you enough what an enormous asset this program has been to me in the few short months I have subscribed. Each morning I get a new short video from Bob, with a lesson and an action step that takes roughly 6 minutes for everything. Remarkably, often the lesson for the day coincides perfectly with something I am already dealing with.

About 2 weeks ago, Bob told the story about some friends of his, which I’d like to share with you. He was talking with a couple, and they confided in him that they dreamed of buying a house, but did not have the money. Well, I don’t need to tell you that I immediately perked up when I heard that their issue was identical to mine. Bob said they didn’t need the money. Make the decision to buy the house and the money will show itself. He called a real estate agent he worked with and told her he’d like her to meet with his friends. “They want to buy a house,” he told her, “and haven’t got any money.” They met with the agent, and made the decision to buy the house before Christmas, which was only 2 months away. They came up with all sorts of ways they could acquire the money, and they did it. They celebrated Christmas in their new home.

That was it for me. If they can do it, I can do it. And I will do it.

Decisions Made On Purpose

I like to say that Laura, my wife, and I create our lives deliberately, or on purpose. We decided early on that when we have kids, she would be a stay-at-home mom, and I would work from home. My oldest is now 6, and that’s exactly what we’ve done.

We decided we wanted to live in our current town before our daughter started Kindergarten so she wouldn’t have to change schools during her school career. We made that decision from the living room of a rental house in a town we did not like. The very next day I presented my real estate agent with a “necessities list” for a rental house in the town we wanted. That night we were signing a lease for our new home in our current town - a home with everything we added to the list. That was six months before Kindergarten started.

And now we made the emphatic decision to buy a house in this same town. I don’t need to know how I’m going to do it. I just need to be confident that I will. And now I am.

Once you make a decision that you are going to do something, you set the Universe into motion. If you begin to harp on all the reasons why you cannot do or have this thing that you want, then you are producing conflicting vibrations around this subject, and your results will be murky (see my blog post Blue + Yellow = Green). So making the decision isn’t enough. You need to make the decision and then focus all your attention and energy on the ways and reasons you CAN do it. And when you do that, you begin to see things happen that move you in the direction of accomplishing your decision.

In the couple weeks since making this major house buying decision, I have seen remarkable events in my life. I am in awe with how quickly the shift happened, and what is happening. The money is quickly showing itself to me: I learned I own an asset I did not know about, existing clients suddenly need new work done, new clients appeared out of nowhere, new referral sources contacted me out of the blue, and I met people who will be helping me achieve my business and life goals. All within 2 weeks since making this powerful decision.

When you wait for the things to happen to make the decision, then nothing happens. You may wait forever. If you make the decision, then the things suddenly start happening.

Making Decisions by Default

It may be difficult to understand how making a decision to do something sets events into motion. But it’s not so difficult to see how living by default results in the same results over and over again. You probably have heard the adage that not making a decision is a decision in and of itself. Sometimes, we are fearful to make a decision about the big things in our lives for a multitude of reasons: fear of the uncertain results, fear of other people’s opinions of us, fear of failing at something yet again.

A wise friend I know taught me that FEAR is an acronym for False Evidence Appearing Real. We internalize the worst case scenario and live it in our minds. It is more horrible in our minds than it would be in real life. And the worst case scenarios would probably never happen anyway.

But the fear feels so real, so we do not make a bold decision. We put it off. We make excuses why we need to wait and rationalize these excuses to justify our decision. This is a decision made by default.

By not making the bold decision, we have still made a decision. We made the decision to be less than what our soul is calling us to be. We made the decision to settle for less than what we really want in life.

Let’s Not Do That Anymore

So here’s another decision I made. I decided not to do that any more. I decided to always make the bold decision, and always reach for the best for myself and my family. Sure I may fall flat on my face sometimes. Failure is a learning tool. Sure I’m a little nervous to post these intentions so boldly on my blog and Facebook. My ego is telling me I’ll look like a fool if I’m not in that house by August. But you know what? I’ve gotten really good at taking my ego and kicking his ass.

From now on, I am in charge. Not my ego, and not FEAR. Decision made.