Making Decisions a Daily Habit – Know Your Process

In keeping with last week’s – lessons learned from our remodel – today’s topic is decision making. (We are almost there!)

More importantly YOUR decision making process, identifying it, owning it and trusting it.

Picking paint and carpet before listing a property is easy. Putting together paint, counter tops, a back splash, cabinet pulls, faucets, etc can be overwhelming to the point of not being fun.

We talked about updating the kitchen for 2 years, but kept stalling out because of the (perceived) stress of picking everything.

Eventually I realized it’s okay to not have all of the answers, or all of the finishes at the beginning. After all, when do we ever know ALL of the steps from the very beginning? Isn’t life about continually moving forward and adjusting?

So rather than feeling like we needed a perfectly crafted mood board at the very beginning, we just started picking one thing at a time and going from there.

What I realized during the process is that we each have our own way of making decisions, and it’s important to honor that process. It’s when we try to do things out of character that we get stuck and are unable to move forward.

For me, picking everything at once is enough to send me into the cul-de-sac of indecision. For others, picking one thing at a time would make it feel so drawn out they couldn’t be bothered with the process.

Here’s what worked for me:

• Each day I committed to one decision. Once that decision was made I moved on to other things not related to the remodel.
• Before making a decision I set the intention that I would enjoy the process and the perfect option would be available. I had been struggling to pick a quartz for the counters. There were a few that I liked, but none seemed to be “the one”. I was trying to decide which one to settle for when I set the intention to find the perfect one and did a final loop through the warehouses. Sure enough, one that I hadn’t seen before was there, and absolutely perfect.
• Start with the decision that will have the biggest impact and then work on the supporting decisions. Once the counter top was picked, the cabinet colors and backsplash were easier, because now it was about finding something that worked with the counters, which narrowed the choices.
• Celebrate each decision. Each decision moves you closer. Take time to celebrate things taking shape.
• Don’t worry about the timing – trust that it is always perfect. Yes, if I had picked everything at once the kitchen would have been done faster, but in this case speed was not a definer of success. Enjoying the process and the outcome was more important, and in this case that took time. How often do we set goals and attach an arbitrary timeframe and then beat ourselves up for not meeting it? What if you let go of the timeframe and just focused on moving forward?

Where do you hesitate to make decisions? How is it holding you back in your life and in your business?

Too often we are held back because we think we need to have all of the pieces before we can move forward, or know exactly how it will end. But really we just need to decide on the next step and focus on that.

What is the one thing you could do in your business right now that would move you forward? How can you take action on it today? Don’t worry about what comes after that. Chances are you aren’t supposed to know that part yet.

To your success!
Nicole