Tag Choosing Well

The Decisions You Make, Make You

Steve Keating 2 Comments

Research shows that the average person makes 35,000 decisions…a day! Assuming 7 hours of sleep each day that leaves 17 hours. That makes for a little over 2000 decisions an hour or one decision every two seconds. 

After seeing that research the first decision I made was to decide the researchers must be nuts. If we’re all making 35,000 decisions a day then we can’t be doing anything else. But then I made another decision to read a bit further. The article said decisions include things like deciding to read further in an article. Deciding to ignore a text notification while reading. Deciding to shift my position in the chair I was reading in. 

So whether we really make 35,000 decisions a day or not, it became clear to me that we make a whole lot more decisions than we are actually aware of. Some of those decisions have very little impact on our lives. Others have a major impact. And many, perhaps very many, we won’t understand their impact for years. 

I suspect many of the “outcomes” of our decisions we never tie back to a decision at all. But this much I’m certain of…the better the decisions we make the better the life we make as well. 

We make many huge decisions without ever considering the impact and consequences they could, or will, have on our lives. That’s because we often don’t realize how big some of our everyday decisions are.

For example, the decision about the people you allow into your life. You are the compilation of the five people you most frequently interact with. Yet for most of us we never even consider the influence other people have on our lives. We allow negative people, people who procrastinate, people who find a problem with every solution into our lives and then wonder why we struggle to be the person we want to be. 

If you want to be more successful then hang out with successful, positive and supportive people. 

I see salespeople all the time who when deciding to make one more sales call on a given day or knock off early they choose knocking off early. That’s a terrible choice in most every case. They limit their success, they limit their career and they limit their income. Salespeople who make that poor choice even a handful of times a month will need to work years to make up the lost income. But when deciding when their day will end they almost never consider the long-term consequences. 

The first step to making better decisions is realizing how many decisions you actually make. 

Little decisions, like deciding between a plain Hershey Bar or a Hershey Bar with Almonds won’t be life altering. But it’s likely that more decisions than you think will indeed have a long-term impact on your life. The most successful people consider the consequences of the consequences before making those decisions. 

You are potentially one choice away from a completely different life. There are two types of people in the world, those who believe their life is largely the sum of their choices and those who believe their life is chosen for them by the lottery of circumstances. 

If you don’t believe that then it’s likely you’re in the second group. If you’re interested in success that’s not the group you want to be in. 

Accept responsibility for your choices and you’ll be accepting responsibility for your life. 

The Better Choice

Steve Keating 3 Comments

Life is all about choices. The fact is, regardless of the circumstances you were born into better choices result in a better life. 

 

While success is a relative term the most successful people simply made better choices to get there. Your own level of success is clearly impacted by your starting point in life. If you’ve added on to whatever you started with then you’ve experienced at least some measure of success in your life. That is most likely due in part to the choices you’ve made in life. 

 

But here’s a choice many people don’t too often consider…it’s the choice to be better everyday. It’s the conscious choice that says today I will do something to be better than I was yesterday. 

 

What did you do today to better yourself? What are you planning to do tomorrow? What about yesterday? How about the day before that or the day before that? How many days has it been since you could specifically say what action you took, intentionally, to improve one area of your life? 

 

Even if it’s reading one page from a book it can help. Even a 5 minute walk is better than no walk. Skipping that coffee stop on the way to work a couple of days a week could have a significant impact on your overall financial well-being. 

 

Choices that look little can turn out to be huge. 

 

One choice, even a small choice, to take action each day to improve yourself could add up to a gigantically better life and ultimately huge success. 


So start making that choice this very day. It’s the choice I call the better choice because it’s all about being better, even just a little better, today than you were yesterday. When you make that choice today then tomorrow will be better because of it. 

Success is Not Required

Steve Keating 5 Comments

So…lots of people will disagree with this but I believe that success is not required of anyone. I also believe that everyone has an opportunity to succeed. That last part there, the part about opportunity, that’s the part that not everyone will agree with.

I understand why, I mean knowing that you actually do have the opportunity to succeed has been known to put pressure on people to try and leverage that opportunity. To a whole lotta people that just looks like too much work.

So instead, they simply say that they don’t have the chance to succeed. 

Let’s talk about those opportunities for a minute. We should all be clear that not every opportunity is created equal. Some people have far more and far better opportunities than others. Depending on where you were born, depending in some cases on when you were born, and sadly, very sadly, even depending all too often on the color of your skin, your opportunities can vary greatly. (yes, I know there are more factors that can come into play but this isn’t intended to be a complete list)

Here’s what all successful people know; regardless of circumstances, regardless of any obstacles, regardless of anything someone else may do to try to stop you, if you want success enough, you can have it.

Hard work, smart work, good planning, and desire can overcome almost ANY circumstance or obstacle. Yes, there are places on this earth where the challenges can make even basic success nearly impossible but “nearly impossible” is not impossible. I should also point out that if you’re reading this you’re not likely reading it from one of those places.

If you’re sitting in Texas, or London, or Rio, or Tokyo and you’re saying “well, what about the people in Syria, (or pick your own place or people) see, not everyone can succeed,” as an excuse for your own lack of success then I have to tell you that’s just an excuse for you not to try and it’s a pretty lame excuse at that.

You have to decide if you’re going to let chance, circumstances, past history and the opinions of others prevent you from achieving the success that is available to you. You also have to decide exactly what success means to you. 

Success is very personal, my success and your success are likely are least somewhat different. You don’t have to do what others expect of you to consider yourself a success but you do have to be honest with yourself. Sitting around wasting your talent and abilities could be someone’s definition of success but most people wouldn’t think it was a good one.

Complaining about what you can’t do has the ability to prevent you from doing what you can do so stop complaining about what isn’t and create what will be…you know you can do it!

There is no requirement that anyone succeed at anything but everyone should know that success is within their reach if they are willing to actually reach for it. YOU are a part of that “everyone” and now that you know you can succeed you have a choice to make. I hope you make it a good one.

The Importance of Decision Making

Steve Keating 8 Comments

Successful people make good decisions. “Lucky” people make good decisions. The people you admire make good decisions. Good results are the product of good decisions.

I could make a strong case that everything “good” comes about as a result of good decisions. Perhaps some people could argue that not “everything” good comes from decisions but this much is certain; the quality of a person’s life is directed affected by the quality of their decisions.

Way too many people are virtually unaware of just how many decisions they make each day. You decide, yes YOU decide, who you hang around with, what you watch and listen to, who you believe, where your information comes from, when to go to bed, how much alcohol to drink, what to eat….all of those things are decisions. 

You even decide whether or not you will have a positive attitude. Yes, even your attitude is ultimately your decision and it is likely the biggest decision you make each day.

Perhaps you think you don’t need to make decisions in those areas, maybe you’re a “go with the flow” kinda person and you just let the people and circumstances around you “decide” for you. If that’s the case you should know that letting “others” decide for you often has the impact of making you less successful than you could be.

It’s great to ask others for advice and I strongly encourage people to have a mentor for that very reason but for decisions affecting you personally YOU should be making the final decision. 

You need to make your own decisions because ultimately it’s the decisions you make that make you who you are. There are outcomes, results, and consequences, both positive and negative, to every decision. Everything you say, do, and even think plays a role in determining who you really are. It’s worth investing a moment or two in deciding what’s best for you.

Some decisions will be harder than others. Some may be excruciatingly difficult. When you don’t know what to do just do the next right thing… the next right thing doesn’t have to be a big thing, baby steps are okay, just keep moving towards being the person you want to be. 

Your life is collectively made from all the decisions you make and don’t make. Work hard to make the decisions that give you the life you want. You’ll find that those decisions work just as hard for you!