5 Steps to Making a Decision

Recently we went to see the Van Gogh exhibition at the Royal Academy. I knew about his colourful paintings of French landscapes but hadn’t seen his earlier work or his pen and ink drawings. The exhibition showed how his painting style developed and how it reflected his life.

And perhaps this is what you want for your working life – you want it to develop and you want it to reflect your life. The really sad thing, though, about Van Gogh’s work is that he was so unrecognised and unrewarded in his own lifetime. And this is NOT what I want for you! Your hard work, skill and enthusiasm should be rewarded. And if you feel it isn’t, you can do something about it. The first step to making this change is to decide to do something about it.

Now it might be that you are aware that you need to make a decision. It’s there in your awareness all the time and you know that sooner or later it will bubble to the surface and you’ll have to decide. Maybe change is in the air at work and you have to decide whether to stay or go. Or maybe you run your own business and you have been given an opportunity that you know you’ve been waiting for – so you have to decide whether to go ahead. And you are aware that, when you decide, it will be a big and painful decision, even if you are moving towards something you really want to do.

Or perhaps you haven’t yet fully come to realise that a decision has to be made. You tell yourself you need more time, you’re not quite ready, you need more information... but mostly you feel you can trundle along as you are now and things will work themselves out. It’s not so much a question of which decision you make, you are more in the space of thinking you don’t need to make a decision at all.

Well, sometimes it’s right to do nothing. But be honest – is doing nothing really the right choice or is it just a way of not making a decision?

If you want to live your life unrewarded and unrecognised, that’s fine. That’s the choice of some people who are happy doing things the way they have always done them and they don’t want to change. But if you want the universe to be able to share in your gifts, if you want to use the skills, abilities and expertise that you possess, so that you can be recognised and rewarded, maybe you need to decide to do that.

Your decision making process could be:

1. Decide what you want. If you genuinely want things to stay the way they are, that’s your decision. If you want more than you have now, decide that you’re going to do something about it.

2. Decide what the next step might be. If what you want is a long way off and seems too impossible, decide what you could do towards it.

3. Decide how often you will work on achieving this goal and for how long.

4. Decide to get support if you need it – a mastermind group, a colleague, a friend, a coach (or all four).

5. Decide to focus on the recognition and reward you will receive and the level of service you will offer out to the universe.

And above all, enjoy this one, wonderful life you have!

(c) 2010 Liz Copeland