Decisions, Decisions!

How to make up your mind without going mental.

Management consultant Suzy Welch remembers the moment 14 years ago when her life "imploded." She was speaking to an auditorium full of insurance executives in Hawaii when she saw the faces of two of her children, then six and five, pressed against the glass door. She had parked them in a dance class, but they'd sneaked out to find her. She wrapped up her remarks and aborted the Q&A. "I was trying to please everyone but pleasing no one," she says. "I had to rethink the way I made my decisions." Author of the bestselling Winning (written with husband Jack Welch, former head of GE), Suzy Welch, 49, has a new book, 10-10-10 (Scribner, $24), that details the strategy she created after that eureka moment. The mother of four explains:

"When faced with a vital decision, ask yourself, How will my choice affect my life ten minutes from now? Ten months from now? Ten years from now?"Too often we decide something by avoiding the immediate ouch. But by looking at the middle and longer time frames as well as the short-term, we're accessing our real values. My business trip is an example. Had I applied the strategy to it back then, I would have declined it. I had other work travel coming up. I was needed at home.

“Many people have found '10-10-10' galvanizing. An entrepreneur moved forward with a new business plan but without the girlfriend who didn't share his goals. A mom of a troubled teen finally got him to a psychologist after putting it off. Often, in our most stressful moments, we make decisions by gut. Or we ask a friend for advice. Or we make no decision and suffer for it. We can live much more deliberately by taking control of choices and really understanding them.

"Sure, there's still room for spontaneity. But when you look at things from three distinct time frames and access the consequences, never again will you say, 'I have no idea why I made this decision.'"

From Reader's Digest - May 2009

 

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