Cost or Contribute?

Life often seems like an endless series of decisions to be made. Chai latte or decaf Americano? Take a walk or sit at the computer? Plant roses or zinnias? Start a business now or wait until you get fired?

Given the fact that we are called upon to make decision after decision everyday, it would seem reasonable to assume that most of us would have given thought to how we make decisions. We’d have our own decision-making tools that we could employ when needed.

If we l lack such tools, too many decisions are simply based on habit. (Chai latte yesterday, chai latte today, chai latte tomorrow.) That’s not the road to living a creative and inspired life.

Self-doubt—simply not trusting ourselves—is behind much of the indecision we encounter. The sheer abundance of options can make it even more difficult, but living decisively is necessary if we’re to have the richest experience possible.

It may also contribute to our health. According to George Crane, “It is uncertainty or indecision that wears people down and promotes peptic ulcers, high blood pressure and nervous breakdowns.”

Since the decisions we make determine the kind of life that we have, how can we improve our ability to make wise decisions? It may be easier than you think.

My starting point is based on this observation from Stewart Emery: “Nothing in the universe is neutral. It either costs or it contributes.”

That bit of wisdom has simplified decision-making for me ever since I heard it. However, it’s fairly useless without a sense of priority. You need to be clear about what matters most to you and be determined to set up your life to support that.

If being physically healthy is a high priority, every food choice either costs or it contributes. If finishing your book in the next 90 days is a priority, every time choice you make either costs or it contributes. It all comes down to bringing your activities and actions into alignment with your personal goals.

Some decisions require gathering information in advance, of course. Wise leaders in all walks of life have sounding boards, people whose opinions they trust. The trick for us, whether we’re the leader of the free world or not, is to exercise wisdom in choosing the voices we listen to.

Often that means getting advice from strangers, not from those nearest and dearest to us. Then thoughtfully weighing that advice while keeping in mind your ideal outcome, can make the process smoother.

The more familiar you are with your own intuitive voice, the easier it will be to rely on it when it’s time to make a decision—especially a big important one. Even if that’s not your usual method of deciding, here’s an exercise that can be helpful providing you pay attention while you’re doing it.

How can you tell if you really want to do something? Toss a coin. Literally. It works—not because it settles the question for you, but, as the Danish poet and mathematician Piet Hein said, “While the coin is in the air, you suddenly know what you’re hoping for.”

Success, prosperity, all the good things in life only come to us after we’ve decided to let them in. Minute by minute and hour by hour, decide in favor of your dreams.

6 Ways to Move Past Your Doubts and Get On With It

 

It is not an exaggeration to say that we spend our days moving closer to our dreams—or farther away. Every moment that we invest in our goals brings us closer and every moment we ignore the prompting of our hearts takes us somewhere else.

When people tell me that  fear is a huge obstacle, I am quit certain that they have misdiagnosed the problem. Most of the time we are bewitched by self-doubt, not genuine fear (unless a tiger is about to devour us).

Self-doubt can afflict anyone, of course. When this occurs, the healthy approach is to combat it with action rather than remaining inert. The more alternatives you have for dealing with those tenuous times, the more quickly you’ll move through them.

If you quake at the thought of going out on your own and setting up shop, or are nervous about embarking on a new venture, here are six fearbashers that can reroute you back to the road to success.

° Do temporary work. March into a temporary help agency and get signed up for a short term project. When you get an assignment, don’t  think of this primarily as a way to earn money. Use this project to do some homework.

No matter what business you are sent to work in, observe what goes on in a detached and analytical manner.  You’ll quickly discover that all sorts of mistakes and mishaps (even stupid decisions) will be part of every day.

Now notice that despite this lack of perfection, the business manages to stay afloat. Notice that every business has huge margins for error and it doesn’t bring them crashing to their knees.

You can certainly do better than that, can’t you? So get out there and do it.

° Study a successful immigrant entrepreneur. A high percentage of people who come to the US from other parts of the world start their own businesses.

Imagine how much harder that would be in a strange culture where you may not speak the language. Yet, many of these newcomers have such a strong desire to build something of their own, a desire that they couldn’t fulfill in their homeland, that the obstacles melt in the face of that determination.

We natives often look like wimps next to the hardworking and committed businessowners who have been drawn to this land of opportunity. Let them inspire you.

° Fail on purpose. Young children try new things without thinking of success and failure. As we get older, many of us avoid any situation where we might not be brilliant. As a result, our world shrinks down to a short list of acceptable activities. This is not the road to self-actualization.

If you are terrified at the thought of failing, make a list all the things you are an utter klutz at doing. Then do something from that list once a week. At the very least, you may entertain your friends when you throw three gutter balls in a row.

At the other end of this temporary humiliation is all the power you’ll gain by surviving a minor failure.

° Develop a big roar. Next time you’re driving alone in your car, pretend you’re the Lion King or Queen. It worked in The Wizard of Oz and it will work for you, too. No kidding.

° Make Nathan Lane your patron saint. In 2000, the wildly talented Lane starred in his own television series which was downright awful. It was so terrible, in fact, that it only ran for a few painful episodes.

Had it been even mildly successful, Lane would have been taping the series instead of wowing audiences in The Producers, a big Broadway hit for which he won the Best Actor Tony  in 2001.

If you try something that turns out badly, think of it as your own failed series—and celebrate the end of your contract.

° Imagine your success. I am convinced that most people fail to go after their dreams or leave their comfort zones because they haven’t taken the time to really think about what rewards their ultimate success would bring them.

Instead, they console themselves by saying things like, “Well, this job or relationship or apartment isn’t really that bad.”

However, when you are focused on the rewards that will inevitably come, setbacks and disappointments are easier to handle. Often, in truth, what looks like a setback is just a resetting of the course and may, in the long run, make the journey sweeter.

That’s why it’s so important to be willing to defer short-lived gratification in order to have something grander in the future. But first you must envision it and sell yourself on the new and better life you foresee.

 

What We Almost Missed

While Bill Bryson was toiling away at a London newspaper, he was dreaming about being a freelance writer. With a wife and family to support, this seemed a risky and selfish dream. So he continued to drag himself to a job that was growing more loathsome.

One day he got a call at work from his wife Cynthia. “I’ve just put the house on the market,” she announced. Her husband was livid, but she remained firm. “You’ve been talking about quitting your job and it’s time you did that.” 

The London house was sold and the Bryson clan moved north to rural Yorkshire for a new life. Bryson’s modest goal was to earn a decent living by writing articles and books. He produced several books on the English language, which had modest sales, but it was his humorous travel tales that earned him a following and massive popularity. He’s also earned numerous awards, including  an honorary OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) for his contribution to literature.

It makes me shudder to think that he could still be an obscure copy editor instead of making his devoted fans, of which I am one, laugh out loud.

Thinking about Bryson’s story makes me want to jump up on my chair and holler, “Hooray for the Cynthia Brysons of the world!” People like her are in short supply. On the other hand, the world is full of people like her husband, people who dream of doing one thing while doing another. 

Self-doubt is a nasty scoundrel that kills armies of dreams and thwarts ambition of all sorts. When we allow self-doubt to keep us from going after our dreams, we dupe ourselves into thinking that we’re behaving prudently. Unless we understand the folly of this position, it’s impossible to take action.

In the end, self-doubt is just that: doubt that one allows to fester in oneself. You don’t need a Cynthia Bryson to cure it, but you do need determination to get past it.

One of my favorite reminders comes from Paulo Coehlo who wrote, “Too often we decide to follow a path that is not really our own, one that others have set for us. We forget that whichever way we go, the price is the same: in both cases, we will pass through both difficult and happy moments. But when we are living our dream, the difficulties we encounter make sense.”

 

IdeaStarter #4 What Scares You?

 

Hardly a day passes when I don’t hear from someone who is bored to tears with their job and longing to step out on their own, but claim that fear is keeping them stuck. Alas, they’re not telling the truth, either to me or themselves. Fear, after all, is that really useful emotion that warns us when danger is near. What’s so sad is that people often interpret as fear a different emotion: self-doubt. As long as they label that feeling as “fear” they continue to see it as a warning sign. On the other hand, if it’s actually a case of self-doubt that’s holding them back, that’s something they can overcome. That can be scary, too.

Then how do we move past this? We have to begin by refusing to keep nurturing our doubts. To paraphrase an old quote, “Doubts, like babies, grow larger with nursing.”

We also have to stop deceiving ourselves that we’ll act after our self-esteem is intact. That’s backwards. Our self-esteem grows because we take action.

When Garland Wright was artistic director of the Guthrie Theater, he challenged his staff by saying, “What we need now is an idea big enough to scare us.”  Do you see the brilliance of that?  How about letting a big, scary idea point you in the direction of your dreams?

$100 Hour: In Phil Laut’s wonderful little book, Money is My Friend, he offers this exercise for testing ideas. “Once you have an idea of what you can do to make your favorite money making idea a financial success, ask yourself whether you are willing to stick with it, no matter what it takes, until you receive your first $100 from it. If you are not willing to do this, then you certainly don’t yet have an idea that you like well wnough to succeed with…If you make a habit of only devoting yourself to ideas that you like so well you are willing to stick with them until you receive your first $100, you will never again feel like yu failed. After receiving your first $100, you can decide whether you want to continue with the idea—but you will be making the choice from the position of having succeeded.

Explore More: If you don’t own a copy of Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art, I’m going to keep nagging you until to add it to your library. If it’s already in your library, pick it up now, open it at random and read a page or two. Ah.

Fear is the cheapest room in the house. I prefer to see you living in better accomodations. ~ Hafiz