THE DECISION MAKER
 By Lorne McAlister, Life Coach

Here's a tool that you can use to turn your dilemma into your decision. A guy was once asked; "Do you have trouble making up your mind?" He answered: "Well, yes and no."

Here's the deal...not to decide is to decide.  You are no longer going to live with the default decision of indecision. It's your life.  You are prepared to exercise your options. You want to move towards your preferred future, if you only knew what it was.  It's time to say "yes" or "no".  Every "yes" is connected to a "no" and every "no" is welded to a "yes".  When you say a new "yes", you are also saying a new "no".  That's the deal.  Nobody get's a different break in life.  So are you going to say "yes" or are you going to say "no"? 

Predicting the future is easy.  Getting it right is hard. The best way to predict the future is to create it.   You decide.  You call it.  Don't forget the  old German proverb because it is still true for you.  "It's your bed.  You made it.  You have to sleep in it."

On  a piece of paper, write THE DECISION MAKER. Below that then write MY DECISION DILEMMA.  Now, in as few words as possible describe the decision that you need, want and are prepared to make.  Be clear, concise, courageous and even cruel if you have to when doing this.

Now write THE POSITIVES and create a column on the right side of the page for THE POINTS. List every positive reason you can think of for saying "yes" to your decision dilemma.  Once you have a list, go back over the positive list and give each reason a point, on a scale of zero to ten - the higher the score, the more important it is to you.  

Now, on a separate sheet write THE NEGATIVES and create a column on the right side of the page for THE POINTS. List every negative reason you can think of for saying "no" to your decision dilemma.  Once you have generated the negative list, go back over it and give each reason a point, on a scale of zero to ten - only this time ten means it is a major drawback.   Add up the score on each sheet.  If the positive score is at least double the negative score, you should do it - whatever "it" is.  But, if the positives don't outweigh the negatives by the two-to-one ratio, don't do it, or at least think twice about it. This exercise will strip away the emotion and help you examine the relative importance of each point - which, of course, is why The DECISION MAKER works so well.    

Go ahead. 

Use your head. 

Put it down on paper. 

Burn off the fog. 

Turn your dilemma into your decision.  Remember, a bad decision is better than no decision.  You can always change, adjust and tweek the decision when you don't get it completely right the first time.  This option only comes to you when you take charge of your life.  So....why wouldn't you choose, decide, and pick? It's time for you to break free from the tyranny of choice.