Deep down, we all know our choices ultimately determine our behaviour and those behaviours ultimately determine our outcomes.
Do we have the luxury of choice if we aspire to excellence in any or all of our life roles.
Choices, even small choices, are the decisions that matter. Each choice in and of its own probably won’t, but the aggregation of them matters big time. Some might be familiar:
- Do I go to bed at a reasonable hour or finish another series on Netflix?
- Do I have just one more glass of wine that might stop be being ready for the next morning?
- Do I spend time with my kids ( or any other key relationship) or play a video game for another couple of hours?
- Do I start work on a critical presentation that isn’t due for a week, or surf Facebook to see what my friends are up to?
We all know the answers to the above questions, however, the challenge is: Are we willing to make the sacrifices necessary to succeed where we want to succeed in life.
We have to make choices and decisions to have the discipline and focus to the process of what we need to do to accomplish our goals.
Discipline is an intriguing thing. It’s not only doing the right thing, the right way, it manifests itself in the making of every day decision making.
- Something that we know we are supposed to do that we really don’t want to …..can we make ourselves do it?
- Something that we know we are not supposed to do that we want to ….can we keep ourselves from doing it?
This kind of decision making can become a moral compass or value sets for all of us to help us do the right things, to stay focused on the process of what we need to do to accomplish our aspirations.
Success can never be guaranteed, however, what we can do is focus on the key tasks and process that afford success that best chance of being a natural output of the work we put in.
A good way to help us on this path is to create a list of the behaviours we want to be remembered for. This becomes our value sets; our job in life then becomes as simple and as complicated as matching our behaviours to our values especially in difficult and challenging circumstances which represents our ultimate test; can we step up and consistently act in accordance with our values.
