Everything in life starts with a decision

My girlfriend Leian, and I were just sharing our thoughts on growth and the steps one needs to take to move forward in life. And that was when she reminded me of something I thought and shared to her.

Everything in life starts with a decision.

Indeed. Everything you do is a choice. You choose the way you are living today. As we walk on the path of life, we are presented with many crossroads and forks. Some are pretty obvious which turn we should take. However, not everything is easy in life. Therefore, there are also those difficult and confusing crossroads that we face in life. And in the fast pace life we are currently living in right now, we move so fast that we meet many more challenges than before and often, we hastily decide on the choices we make.

Yes, whether it’s right or wrong, it still is a decision you have made that brought you to the ‘you’ today. It’s unfortunate that most people I know blame their circumstances or other people instead of themselves every time they find themselves in a tight situation. Oh, don’t get me wrong here. I am not trying to gloat that I do not make any mistakes or have never made a wrong decision. I have my share of mistakes and I too once blame my circumstances instead of myself. But after a while, I began to realise that everyone faces the same thing in life. So why are some people successful and some aren’t?

You see, when we face difficulties in life, we are often presented with many choices to workaround the problem. It’s up to us to find out what they are and then decide the best course of action. No doubt, I won’t deny that my best course of action will not be the same for you. But that’s another discussion altogether.

Right now, let’s take for example that you find yourself being sick and tired of your current job. You loathe getting up from bed to work everyday. You no longer have the drive and passion for the job as you had the first week you were there. You now realised that your boss only want to squeeze more work out of you. In short, your current job sucks. Thus, you know you have to move. That’s basically seems like the logical move! But you also remind yourself that the job is quite stable and it pays you pretty well. Moving away from this job means moving away from a stable source of income into the unknown again. You also tell yourself that a new job will mean picking up new skills again. So, what can you do? What are the choices here? And what will your decision be?

As I said earlier, there’s is no right or wrong choices here. You decide which course of action is best for you. Here, the one that is willing to take a bit of risk and willing to take on new challenges for a better job prospect will naturally decided to leave for a new job. And the less secure will choose to continue with the lousy job.

My point here is, don’t blame the circumstances. Blame yourself if you find yourself in a situation that you do not like. It was your decision that brought you to where you are today. Did anyone make the decision for you? Even if someone forces you to make a decision, ultimately, it still is your choice and decision. This is where the successful differentiate themselves from the average. They realise that their decisions today determines their future. So, it’s not a choice of liking. They deliberately choose to be what they want to be in the future. In short, what you do today defines what you are tomorrow. And all this boils down the decisions you make in life.

If you want to be a successful tennis player in the near future, what will your decisions be? Even if you do not have the skills today, you will need to decide to practise your strokes and increase your stamina and physique today. You don’t do them because you like it. No one likes to go through the tiring ordeal of training a whole day, day after day. But, if you decide that you want to be the professional tennis player you envision, that what other choice do you have? Of course, you can decide to slack from training as well. After all, it is your life and you live your life the way you like it. Just don’t blame life circumstances when you get beaten by a younger player who trains each and every day. It was your choice to slack training that made you lose.

So, when you need to decide. Take some time and ponder upon the decision. A decision is never easy to make no matter how trivial the matter is. But that’s life. If you were to know what’s behind the doors of choices, life will not be as fun and exciting to live in. Everything would end up being so predictable, won’t it? And to end this post, I’d just share this. One of my mentors told me that ‘a bad decision is better than indecision.’ It’s better to find out that you made a bad or wrong decision and decide to learn from it than never making a decision and be stuck at where you are in life right now. God bless.