Jolt! by Phil Cooke (whitelam books .TXT) 📕

2. FIND GOOD DECISION MAKERS AND LEARN FROM THEM.

Who are the people you know who make the best choices? They don’t have to be high-level business leaders. One might be a soccer mom who understands the power of good decisions. Perhaps it’s your pastor or a friend in the community. You are surrounded by people who make choices every day. Find the ones who make strong choices and spend time with them—especially those who wrestle with the same types of challenges you face.

Early in my life, I learned the power of associating with successful people. I heard a story about a successful businessman who was frustrated that he was only making five hundred thousand dollars a year. By most standards, he was rich, but he wanted to move to the next salary level. At a business conference, he met a highly motivated real estate agent who was making more than one million dollars a year and asked the agent his secret. The real estate agent replied, “It’s about association. I decided I wanted access to million-dollar ideas, so I associate with million-dollar people.”

That real estate agent was right. Whatever your salary or career level, if you want to get to the next step, stop spending so much time with people at your level and begin to stretch. Find people at the level you want to reach and begin associating with them. Is this snobbish? Absolutely not. There’s nothing snobbish about feeding a champion athlete expensive food because coaches know that what goes into an athlete dictates how well he or she will perform. If you want to perform better in your family, in your company, in your relationships, or in your personal life, start feeding yourself from the riches of successful people.

I believe it would be a safe assumption that the great majority of people work at jobs in which they find very little personal satisfaction. Without proper training on how to make wise choices in one’s life, the chances are very slim anyone will make them.

—SIDNEY MADWED, MOTIVATIONAL WRITER

3. MAKE GOOD DECISIONS EVERY DAY.

Start a habit of making strong decisions. Don’t begin ordering people around and become a jerk, but stop putting things off or avoiding. Start making good decisions today. You don’t have to start out making world-changing decisions about the war on terrorism or world hunger; just start with small things—that pile of papers on your desk, for instance. Just as an athlete trains his muscles for a sporting event, your decision-making muscles need to be trained, and the key is starting slow. When you see what can be accomplished in your life—even by small choices—you’ll experience what I call a “decision rush” that will give you the excitement and energy to move to the next level.

Look around. What are the choices you’ve avoided in your life and the decisions you’ve been putting off? Nothing is too small or silly to begin with, because the small decisions start training you for the big ones.

Honor isn’t about making the right choices. It’s about dealing with the consequences.

—MIDORI KOTO, HIGHLAN DER CHARACTER

4. MAKE TOUGH DECISIONS ON A REGULAR BASIS.

As you grow in your decision-making skills, don’t avoid the big ones. Learn to face one difficult dilemma each day and make a decision on it. Making tough decisions is all about perspective. My daughters, Kelsey and Bailey, wrestle with choices that I wouldn’t think twice about because I’ve had far more experience. Work the decision-making muscle and expand your ability to handle the hardest decisions in life.

5. BEGIN TO GROW IN THE CHOICES YOU MAKE.

Making right choices comes from experience. Every time you make a choice— either wrong or right—learn from it. Start building a “decision data bank” that will help you the next time you’re faced with a challenge and need to make a choice. Every choice has a consequence, and we have to learn to live within those decisions. Many people refuse to make choices because of the potential consequences, but thank God for people who have the courage to see beyond potential failure and make the hard choices in life.

Once decision making becomes a habit, you’ll begin to enjoy the freedom, accomplishment, and joy it will release in your life. Too many people sit around waiting for other people to make choices for them.

» REAL FREEDOM LIES IN MAKING YOUR OWN DECISIONS, PLANNING YOUR OWN CHOICES, DEALING WITH THE CONSEQUENCES, AND DETERMINING YOUR OWN DESTINY.

Like the rest of this journey of change, making right choices isn’t always easy. If you’ve lived a life of bad decisions, you’ll be carrying a lot of baggage that may be tough to lose. It might even shock you to discover that you’ll probably have friends who won’t like this new person who’s taking charge of his or her own life and making positive decisions. Many of your friends and family members will prefer to keep hanging out, blaming society, the government, or their parents for their problems. They won’t like someone who suddenly causes them to confront the real problems that are holding them back.

My advice is to be sensitive and gracious to their frustrations, but don’t give in. Not for a moment. In fact, let this statement be your first choice:

I’ll never go back to blaming others, waiting for others to make my decisions, or giving up my freedom of choice. Starting today, I realize it’s not the conditions or circumstances of my life that are holding me back, it’s the choices I make or don’t make. From now on, I’m getting the right information, spending time with good decision makers, making tough choices every day, and growing in those choices. I will never look back, and I choose to move forward into the future that awaits me.

I can tell you, from living in earthquake country, the most powerful jolts are the ones that happen in contained spaces. Earthquakes have a lot more impact inside a building than in an open field. That’s why our