Jolt!, Phil Cooke [reading women txt] 📗

Certainly, people who have grown up in abusive families, been surrounded by negative people, or been the victims of crime, extreme poverty, or physical handicaps have challenges most of us know little about and can hardly understand. But even within the context of a horrible upbringing, physical handicap, or negative situation, it’s the choices we make in the context of those situations that make the real difference in our lives.

Actor Christopher Reeve could have easily given up after his freak horseback riding accident left him a quadriplegic, tethered to a breathing machine. Everyone would have understood if, after a successful life as a movie star, he had shrunk back and faced the rest of his life in resignation and defeat.

But Christopher Reeve chose a different path. He chose to be a fighter, an activist, and a role model to millions of people with and without physical limitations. He made a choice. In spite of his conditions, circumstances, and limitations, he made a positive decision to move forward.

Your ability to change your life is directly connected to your ability to make choices and to take responsibility for those choices.

» YOUR DAILY DECISIONS DETERMINE YOUR DESTINY.

Working in Hollywood, I’ve met lots of people who want to produce movies. At parties or social gatherings, they’re quick to talk about their movie idea and how they’re going to write an award-winning screenplay. They have the greatest goals and aspirations but never seem to actually get anything down on paper.

They have the desire to do it, but they have never made the decision to do it. Decision is always the by-product of commitment. When you commit to reaching a goal, you make a decision—a choice—and things start happening.

Good plans shape good decisions. That’s why good planning helps to make elusive dreams come true.

—LESTER R. BITTEL, WRITER

The desire to make good choices is one thing; actually making those choices when the time comes is quite another. It’s one thing to decide you’re going to stop drinking, but it’s another thing to make that choice at the next party when the hostess hands you a martini. It’s one thing to decide to deal with pornography, but another thing to make the right choice when you’re in the office alone and realize how easy it is to find it on the Internet. It’s easy to think about one day going back to college but never quite get around to signing up for a class.

Intentions and actions. Two different things.

We’re not retreating, we’re just advancing in another direction.

—GENERAL GEORGE S. PATTON

Every great leader has wrestled with difficult decisions. The cornerstone of great leadership is the ability to see information and then make the correct decision—even if that information is incomplete or inaccurate. In the business world, top executives aren’t paid millions of dollars to carry briefcases, analyze data, or run meetings. They’re paid to make decisions. At the highest corporate levels, billions of dollars hang in the balance, and correct decisions are critical.

Making those types of choices sometimes takes great courage. In Fast Company magazine, Senator John McCain wrote:

Without courage, all virtue is fragile: admired, sought after, professed, but held cheaply and surrendered without a fight. Winston Churchill called courage “the first of human qualities . . . because it guarantees all the others.” That’s what we mean by the courage of our convictions . . .

Love makes courage necessary. And it’s love that makes courage possible for all of us to possess. You get courage by loving something more than your own well-being. When you love virtue, when you love freedom, when you love other people, you find the strength to demand courage of yourself and those who aspire to lead you. Only then will you find the courage, as Eleanor Roosevelt put it, “to do the thing you think you cannot do.” (emphasis added)

Writer E. M. Forster said, “Either life entails courage, or it ceases to be life.” The kind of courage you display doesn’t have to happen on the battlefield or in a corporate boardroom. Courage happens when a mom speaks up at a PTA meeting, a worker defends a fellow employee wrongly criticized at the office, or a person makes the decision to confront a friend about suspected drug abuse.

Courage is what takes you from intention to action and from debate to decision.

Begin today. Every time you procrastinate making a choice, you take a detour on the road of change. Success is simply the result of a lifetime of choices, and every day you delay puts your future success on hold.

Here are the secrets I’ve discovered for making better choices in life:

1. FIND THE BEST INFORMATION AVAILABLE.

Great decision makers are great learners. They know that making decisions is about balancing information and that often the person with the best information wins. What changes do you want to make in your life? Whatever the change, get the right information first.

Want to stop drinking? Find as much information as you can about treatment programs. Find the right program for you, and make a good decision.

Want to advance in your career? Read books, listen to podcasts or audio-books, scour trade magazines, go to the right seminars and conferences. Learn everything you can about the next level in your career so that you can make the best decisions possible.

Need to go back to school? There are lots of colleges out there, and amazing numbers of people fail because they simply can’t make a decision on which college to attend. Check schools out on the Internet, order catalogs and brochures, visit a few in person. Get the right information to be sure it’s the best choice and offers what you need, at the right location, and fits your budget.

No intelligent decision can be made without the right information, so to make the right choices, do your homework first.

One’s philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes . . . and the choices we make are ultimately our responsibility.

—ELEANOR ROOSEVELT