I decided to throw myself headlong into things Tuesday . A ride, work, each thing with a confidence of direction. It made damn near everything go more smoothly. Gone was the “what should I do next?”, the chase, the chaos. I realized I’d inadvertently forced my own hand. I also realized I had taken the advice of a couple of previous posts. I’d decided a lot, but not in the ways I usually do.
In the past I’ve used the word decide as a way to declare what I(we) want in life. I’m deciding to be successful, I’ve decide to be more healthy, I’m deciding that my businesses will make it through the pandemic, I’m deciding not to say yes to so much, thereby helping control the things that cause me anxiety. It’s an anchoring of a mindset. It works. You should do it.
Tuesday’s attack brought about something different. More granular. It was actually making decisions and doing. It was having an opinion on everything that day and acting on it. I tend to be too abdicating some times and it affects me. Teams and the people we work and live with like things to be decided for them. They like guidance. So again I decided things and again it made my life easier. I took decisions out of other people’s hands and acted. It yielded results.
I just spent 15 mins slowly scanning through the last 20 months worth of posts to find one I wrote about having opinions. Why that has value. It must be hidden somewhere because I didn’t find it. I did find a post about Weezer, which for this exercise may even work. The point of the post was outlining that it is good to have opinions but only if we stick to them. You can say no other Weezer album is as good as the Blue one (likely true) or you can be one of those “Pinkerton (their second album) is a masterpiece” type of folks. Neither is right. It’s an opinion. You get to decide. My post just said to be internally confident in those opinions because it helps define how we see the world. Every Weezer album can’t be the best, and so, we can’t agree with everything.
This seemingly tangential 90’s music example is meant to help you uncover how little decisions matter. Each one, a sentence in the definition of who we are. My Tuesday involved a lot of these. If I thought we (our team at the restaurant) should do “X”, I declared it and moved on. It seemed like the decisions were falling like dominoes, adding stack after stack of confidence. That’s what I mean by granular decisions. Well, I also wanted a chance to declare Weezer’s, My Name is Jonas as there best song ever. Don’t bother trying to convince me otherwise.
As you venture out into today’s opportunities think about the things you either decide or let slide. Try and stop and make some yay or nays and see if it doesn’t help add more confidence to what you do.
Put on the Blue Album by Weezer and rock a little while you’re at it. Those Pinkerton nerds were wrong anyway.
#hugsandhi5s
