I can’t tell you how often I’ve seen someone want to do something but they are in this habit mode so when they try to sort out a promise to do something, they say they’ll try.
Try is not really an action. It’s a thought about action.
But when you make the active decision to decide on some course of action to take for some deed, it’s rather liberating.
One of the tricks I learned to help me make decisions was to focus intensely on the end result. To project my potential outcomes.
Here’s a simple example:
I don’t want to go to the gas station today. I’d rather ride my bike or go running. Eh… I’ll get gas later.
But what happens when you don’t go to the gas station?
Sooner or later you are forced to, so you know you’re going to be doing it. If you pick later, later might be waiting for a tow truck to get you there. Later might interfere with something totally cool that pops up, but you can’t because you HAVE TO go get gas. You just never know!
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Personally, I’d rather take control and take action. In other words, go get gas on my own terms, or as close to my own terms as I can make it. Plus I always try to make the drab a little less dull.
Instead of a bike ride, I throw the bike in the back and go somewhere new after I get gas! Or I find a new neighborhood to run through that’s near my gas station.
I take a CD and blast myself with it while headed to the gas station or I get out my Bluetooth ear piece and call someone I haven’t chatted with in a long time but have been meaning to call.
This helps me learn how to start deciding. Making alternative and helpful plans. Making the drab more bearable.
Somehow, deciding to take proactive decisions not only becomes easier in time, but as you “learn” in your head that good things come from it, you may find yourself more readily making choices because you’ve supported the action in the past and have experienced the pleasant end of such. Deciding is a learned behavior, like most everything else.
Then again, there’s always plan B. (Plan Bruce?)
Just get it done so it’s not hanging over your head because it sucks to have things hovering over your ass like your own rainy cloud. (And don’t forget to make it fun since you have to do it!)
