Wouldn’t life be so much easier if we could make all our decisions with a little game of “Eeny, meeny,miny, moe”.  Seriously!  How cool would that be?  And how much less stress would we have throughout our day when decisions have to be made?!

Yeah, well it’s too bad life doesn’t work that way if you ask me. Look, in business situations I am actually dang good at making decisions quickly and feeling good about them, but in my personal life…not so much!  Having to make decisions about my personal life is definitely not on my list of favorite things to have to do.  In my business life I was forced to become good at making decisions because I was the CEO of a big company with over 1,800 employees who all counted on me to make the right decisions quickly, so I became really comfortable doing so.  But once my workday was over if someone asked me what I wanted for dinner that night I couldn’t handle the pressure of making that decision…crazy,  I know, but it was true.  For some reason once my work day was over the last thing I wanted to do was make any decisions about my personal life.

Well even though I sold my company and I no longer have so many employees counting on me, I still haven’t gotten over my lack of enjoyment for making decisions.  So you can just imagine how happy I feel about having to make the fifty gazillion decisions that have to be made in building our new house!  ARRGGHHH….it feels like my head is going to explode!  And my problem is that I can’t just point at something and say “that one”…oh, no…it could never be that easy…first I have to research the heck out of every stinking option that has ever existed out there to make sure I know what all my options are.  Then I have to price compare every option to figure out the best price possible without being “penny wise, pound foolish”.  And that would sound like a wise thing to do until you consider the gazillions of items that have to be researched and compared, and then it is just plain madness!  But at the same time I don’t want to make a mistake with one of my choices because it will be a costly mistake and it will be one I will be stuck with for years to come to look at day after day in regret that I made the wrong choice.

Funny how much that story parallels to most of the personal choices we have to make in our lives. Who we date, who we marry, how many kids we have, where to live, what house to live in, what school to go to, what career to pursue, what restaurant to eat at, which brand of laundry detergent to use, what car to drive, whether to drink skim milk or 2%….the list goes on and on and on. Some of the decisions are small and meaningless, while others, if made wrong, have consequences that are both costly and something we have to be stuck with the consequences of for years to come, living with regrets day after day.

So what is the solution?  How I wish I could say it was “eeny, meeny, miny, moe”, but I can’t, because our life choices are far more important than that.  No, the solution is a little more grown-up then making choices based on a childhood game.  If I am honest with myself the best way to make personal choices is for me to make them the same way I did as the CEO of my company:   Look at the facts of the situation without letting any emotion or fear come into it.  Just gather and study the facts to determine which appears to be the right answer to your decision.  Don’t base the decision on the consequence that might follow, base it on what is the RIGHT thing to do given all the facts.  Then choose that decision and then pray that if in any way it’s wrong that God will intervene and keep you from making a bad choice.  Then move confidently forward with the decision you made, having faith that if it isn’t right that God will find a way to stop you.  Using that method to make choices in business has been truly MAGIC in my business life.  Learning to set emotions and fears aside and go on the facts of what I saw, trying to make the best decision based on those facts, was what helped me to be so confident and decisive with my company.  So now it’s time to apply that to my personal life and all the decisions I face there.  I figure if it worked so well for me before then it’s time to use that method in every area of my life.

Yes, eeny, meeny, miny, moe still sounds much easier, but it is far less likely to produce the RIGHT thing for our lives.  So it’s time to pull up those big kid panties and be decisive and confident and strong – making the best decisions on the facts, putting the fear and emotions aside while we do, then move forward in faith that it will all work out the way it should because you have now done your part.

Have a great day!  I am off to make more decisions 🙂

~Amy