So I was reading Oprah Magazine, which I love and found some great excerpts from an article about Decisions by Martha Beck.<\/p>\n
Martha writes about Claire and her intention to have the perfect<\/em> man, home, and career and said \u201cI can\u2019t commit to the wrong thing!\u201d\u00a0 Martha then shares that Claire\u2019s life was devoted to obsessively avoiding something economists call \u2018opportunity cost\u2019.\u00a0 Whenever we choose one course of action, we rule others out.\u00a0 Giving up those other options is the opportunity cost of any decision.\u00a0 Claire couldn\u2019t bear the thought of losing any opportunity by making a clear choice.\u00a0 She was an opportunity miser.<\/p>\n Just as money misers hoard their wealth, living as if they were poor even when they\u2019re rich, opportunity misers hoard their freedom to choose \u2014 and end up becoming prisoners of indecision.<\/p>\n I see this happen so often when people are evaluating getting started with us.\u00a0 Thankfully not as often as people who see what there is to offer and just get started.\u00a0 But it does come up.\u00a0 And if you look deeper into that person\u2019s life, it shows up all over.<\/p>\n Some people are so afraid to make this truly simple decision that they miss out on something great.\u00a0 \u201cWhat if?\u201d, they say.\u00a0 \u201cWhat if it doesn\u2019t work out?\u201d\u00a0 And I say, \u201cWhat if?\u201d\u00a0 \u201cWhat if it\u2019s the absolute greatest decision for your life?\u201d<\/p>\n Andy Andrews said \u201cWe don\u2019t always have the ability to make right decisions, but we do have the ability to make our decisions right.\u201d\u00a0 So just do it.\u00a0 If you see the opportunity and it all looks good \u2013 move.\u00a0 It\u2019s tortuous otherwise.\u00a0 You can start and always quit if that\u2019s what you decide, but at least you\u2019ll know and won\u2019t always wonder \u201cWhat if?<\/p>\n Another great passage from Martha Beck\u2019s article:\u00a0 People who trust their gut over their brain often take flying leaps with little information \u2014 risky, but at least they get somewhere.\u00a0 Folks with no faith in either their intellect or their instincts generally follow the path of least resistance; again, not an optimal strategy, but not paralyzing, either.\u00a0 Great strategists trust both intellect and instinct; they gather information until they feel they can make a good decision.\u00a0 But people who try to decide with the mind alone, who place no faith in their heart\u2019s desires, are doomed to stall and fuss, compare and contrast, forever insisting that just a little more knowledge will make the choice clear.\u00a0 It won\u2019t.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve heard this called the \u201cParalysis of Analysis\u201d.\u00a0 Eventually, people who practice this talk themselves out of even the best situations.\u00a0 What you have to ask yourself is, \u201care the people who are offering this to me having success and do I trust them?\u201d\u00a0 If so, move\u2026. take action.<\/p>\n More from Martha:\u00a0 Check in with yourself:\u00a0 Does your life feel meaningful and on-purpose at this moment?\u00a0 If the answer is yes, your energy is invested in living your best life.\u00a0 But to the extent that you feel misery, your energy is asking to be reinvested.\u00a0 Misery<\/em> literally means \u201cthe feeling of being a miser.\u201d\u00a0 If you\u2019re miserable, stop harding your life energy.\u00a0 Spend it now!\u00a0 Make a choice, any choice.\u00a0 If you\u2019re still miserable, you can choose again.\u00a0 Eventually, you\u2019ll see that all misery is simply life asking you to trade your current course of action\u2013or inaction\u2013for something purposeful and true.<\/p>\n From Faust, \u201cSeize this very minute.\u00a0 What you can do, or dream you can do, begin it.\u00a0 Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.\u201d\u00a0 This doesn\u2019t mean you\u2019ll never misstep.\u00a0 It means that when you trade indecision for choice, you\u2019ll be rewarded with either success or education.\u00a0 Guaranteed.<\/p>\n You have the opportunity to discover that for yourself.\u00a0 Feed your mind, but feel your heart.\u00a0 Trust in your truth.\u00a0 It will be the best investment you ever make.<\/p>\n \u2013Melissa Knecht<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" So I was reading Oprah Magazine, which I love and found some great excerpts from an article about Decisions by Martha Beck. Martha writes about Claire and her intention to have the perfect man, home, and career and said \u201cI can\u2019t commit to the wrong thing!\u201d\u00a0 Martha then shares that Claire\u2019s life was devoted to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":247,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[11,12,13,14,15,16,17],"class_list":["post-5","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-melissas-corner","tag-decision","tag-faust","tag-martha-beck","tag-money","tag-opportunity","tag-oprah","tag-oprah-magazine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/kevinknecht\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/kevinknecht\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/kevinknecht\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/kevinknecht\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/247"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/kevinknecht\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/kevinknecht\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10,"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/kevinknecht\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5\/revisions\/10"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/kevinknecht\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/kevinknecht\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/kevinknecht\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}