On the 4th day of getting your shit together, your life coach said to you…

Make a Decision

Do you wonder why you so often fail at the things that you plan? Maybe you can never stick to your diet, or you resort to yelling at the kids after a long day. Part of it is because you haven’t spent time creating awareness of what you’re actually doing.

But the other reason that you fail at planning is because you’re not making a decision.

Let me explain.

We so often hear people throw around terms like intention and goals. It’s important to set intentions. Goals are great, too. But if you haven’t made a decision to commit, you might as well have just set an intention to transform yourself into a unicorn.

It ain’t gonna happen.

If you want your plans to succeed, you have to make a decision to do those plans.

Do you ever find yourself saying any of the following?

• I’m going to try to stop yelling at my kids.
• I’m going to try not to drink wine this week.
• I’m probably going to go to that yoga class tomorrow.
• I’m going to try to save money every week.

Is it any wonder that you’re not following through on your plans?

Research shows that there are many different ways to succeed at achieving your goals. Some techniques involve using visualization or affirmations.

How to Be Getting Your Shit Together 91% of the Time

Visualization and affirmations are effective. However, you have to take one step back.

What is the decision that you’re actually making?

Studies show that people who make a decision to do something succeed 91% of the time, compared with people who simply try to motivate themselves with information or with nothing at all.

You don’t need more planning. You don’t need more motivation. You simply need to make a decision. I distinguish the word decision from the word intention, just because I know that for some people, intention sounds more woo-woo and open ended. It doesn’t have the connotations of concrete commitment that the word decision has.

Let me give you a little example of how this all works.

I have been on a weight-loss program for the past few months. A diet, if you will. The date of the annual family Christmas party was coming up. I knew that if I cheated on my diet, I would probably not lose any weight in the following week, and I’d be bummed. I had already decided to cheat on my diet on Christmas weekend, but this party was a few weekends before. Did I really want to sabotage my weight-loss success?

I woke up on the day of the party, and I still didn’t know. I hadn’t decided what I was going to do.

All week I had told myself:

• I don’t want to cheat at the party.
• I’m going to try not to drink at the party.
• I’m probably going to stick to my diet at the party.

All of these statements ended with a little voice in my head saying, “But I might change my mind when I get there.”

That is NOT a decision. That is a weak attempt at a goal.

I needed to decide. The beauty is that I could go either way: I could decide to go ahead and just let myself indulge at the party. Or I could decide to stick to my diet. If I didn’t make a decision at all, guess which scenario would be more likely to happen?

Making a decision is hard. It involves being brutally honest with yourself. In my case, I sought support from some friends who could talk me through the scenarios. One friend asked me a really valuable question. She said: “Be honest. Can you not drink at this party?”

And you know what? I knew that if I made the decision, I could avoid drinking at the party.

The support and the asking the hard questions helped me make the decision. I made a decision not to cheat on my diet, and I succeeded.

Decide Before You Plan

We’re all hung up on this notion that in order to be getting your shit together, you need to be more organized. And organization involves planning.

Are you starting to see that you have it all wrong?

You have to let go a little bit. You have to take the to-do’s off your plate and become more entrenched in the moment. And if you want to really move forward with those things that you most desire, you have to make a decision to do them.

So if you’re itching to plan, if you’re itching to make a to-do list, if there is something you’re itching to accomplish, ask yourself: Instead of going ahead and planning it, can you simply say to yourself, “I decide to do it”?

This post is part of a 12-day challenge. If you want to start getting your shit together from the beginning, check out the previous days of the challenge:

12 Days of Getting Your Shit Together – Day 1

12 Days of Getting Your Shit Together – Day 2

12 Days of Getting Your Shit Together – Day 3