The role of decision making on the path to success

Success, I believe means different things to different people, varying also with the stage of life of an individual. For some, success means having a lot of money, fame and tangible possessions like houses, cars, stocks, etcetera. Others would describe success as the fulfilment one gets from having imparted many lives, need I say that I am biased to this definition. For a ‘jambite’, gaining admission into the university would be the peak of success whereas a businessman would be looking to seal some major deals. Determining the meaning of success is a very personal thing. The point however is that success, like many other good things of life, does not just happen. It is instead a consequence of many deliberate efforts, the beginning of which is making a decision.

If you are like me, making a decision could be very frightening, especially if it is one that would cause some major changes in your life, a phenomenon described by some to be ‘decision-paralysis’. But like A.J. Hartley and Davidson Hewson said, ‘What must be done must be done, whatever the price, the cost, the pain...’ Not making a decision is in itself a decision. For many, making a decision is often accompanied by doubts of whether they would be able to follow through with it or not. But according to Jack Canfield’s law of attraction, ‘you will be able to manifest what you need to follow through on any decision once you have fully committed to it.’ I have found out that at any time I make a concrete decision to do a particular thing even whilst I am unsure I can do it, things around me eventually align to make sure I get it done. I receive the energy and internal motivation that I need to carry out the task. If on the other hand I leave it to chance, I almost always never get to it.
In every one of us is a desire for more than we currently have and are experiencing. We all want to succeed (whatever that means to you). The question usually is how? The how-to seems to be different for each one of us. This brings to bear the importance of sitting down to ask ourselves, the whats, hows and whys and making concomitant decisions that would be followed through. Robert Kiyosaki, author of the best-selling book, ’Rich Dad, Poor Dad,’ recounts how he in 1975, in a small apartment made the decision to be rich and decided on the pathway he needed to take to get there.
Conclusively, we see that a major decision is often accompanied by several minor decisions which usually are daily activities in the direction of our goals. Because we are humans and the best of us is prone to making mistakes, we have to consistently review the minor decisions to make sure we are being effective in the pursuit of success even though the major decision remains constant. For all of us, there is a place called ‘there’ and we must never allow the fear of making a wrong decision to hold us back from all we can achieve. You can make that decision today, what is the worst that can happen?