Posted on 27 Jan, 2010 -
Getting on With Life in the Rain
* At times like this it is sometimes just a case of getting on with life
* Some useful techniques for making decisions and doing the right things with your life
* How a single white bird has somehow made some sense of it all
OK, I give up. I admit defeat. This dark, drab, boring, cold and grey January has defeated me. I have failed to sustain my general overall feeling of warm happiness. I have failed to find beauty even in this sodden, patchy landscape. And I have failed to count and find comfort in my lucky stars. (A clear night so I could see them would ****** help.)
I feel slightly hollow inside (like the grate I still haven’t cleared out since the weekend’s somewhat cheering fire), lackluster, slightly despondent, but still functioning. Which is why I decided to make this a more function-based email.
Even if I’m not singing in the rain or skipping down the road, I can still keep my head up, take small comfort from meals and the warm pink skin of my children… and GET ON WITH LIFE.
Because even when it’s wet and dark for almost the 15th day in a row… when you don’t want to get out of bed and you really can’t face having to deal with the latest disaster that’s hit your life… you still have to get on with it. And that means taking action. It means being strong. And it means making decisions.
My two minute summary of this latest best-selling book could help make the next decision you have to make a piece of cake
One of the biggie self-help books that’s been doing the rounds at the moment is 10-10-10 by Suzy Welch. Apart from the fact that I’m wondering whether Suzy Welch is the mother of Tony Welch who’s been eating too many sweets in a Topsy and Tim book about going to the dentists that my children have… I was attracted to this book because the idea is very simple.
Basically, whenever you have a decision to make, ask yourself what the consequences of your decision will be in ten minutes time, in ten months time and in ten years. Hence the title, 10-10-10.
Our decisions can be swayed in the present moment by so many different things playing on our often highly volatile and highly suggestible emotional state, that it’s often hard to make a rational and sensible decision.
Although the idea of always making ‘sensible decisions’ scares me almost as much as making silly ones, there is always something to be said for stepping back and thinking carefully about the decision with some perspective.
I have tried this out myself this morning on a couple of ideas and found it quite useful. It certainly, as Welch says, was effective in surfacing some of my “unconscious agendas”. I found that while I thought I was looking towards a certain option for several reasons, the main over-riding reason was a short-term panicky one.
I think the decisions this book is talking about are more the ‘Should I take this job?’ variety than the ‘Should I have a second doughnut?’ but on reflection I actually believe it could be just as useful for the latter…
Small refuge in the appearance of a white bird - and some more decision-making techniques
The sky, while I have been writing, has turned even darker so the whole world outside the window looks like it exists in the jampot full of water after my children have finished painting. Amazing… breath-taking… and dare I even say “beautiful"… a white pigeon keeps flying across it, startlingly white and bright as if lit by a bright source of light.
For some reason, this has made everything feel a bit better - and the world make a bit more sense. I have been inspired, in fact, to more activity and have dug up some further suggestions:
* Decision-Making Myths. Another book that has just arrived on my desk called Manage Your Mind by Gillian Butler and Tony Hope says that there are many myths about decision-making. “One of them is that everything hangs on making the right choice. Open the right door and you will find yourself in the enchanted garden, open the wrong one and you will fall into the dungeon from which there is no escape. A second myth is that people are either decisive or indecisive.”
* In most situations, there is no one ‘right’ decision - as if you were trying to pick a winning card out of six turned face down. Each of the options will probably lead to further decisions to make, cons as well as pros and unpredictable difficulties.
* Try these two techniques first. From the Manage Your Mind book, I like the two suggestions of filling out a balance sheet and doing mental trial runs. With the first you need to take a piece of paper, write the question along the top then write down some ideas about ‘advantages’ on the left and ideas for ‘disadvantages’ on the right. For the second method, “pretend that you have made one choice and then imagine, as fully as possible, what it would be like had that choice been made.” Then imagine you’d made the other choice and live it in your imagination for a couple of days to see how that feels.
* Ask yourself what is THE No. 1 most important thing/criteria for you in this matter. Try to boil it down to one statement, even if it has two elements. Then test your statement against the 10-10-10 idea above.
* Boring but effective. Although I slightly pooh-poohed the idea of making ‘sensible’ decisions above, if you’re facing a very important decision in your life then you’ll certainly want to give your best shot at making it well. It may well pay, therefore, to use the kind of “Rational Decision Making Models” used by business. Here are the basic steps:
1. Carefully define the situation/decision to be made in detail.
2. Identify the important criteria for the process and the result.
3. Consider all possible solutions, doing as much research as you can.
4. Try to fully consider and figure out the consequences of the different solutions versus the likelihood of satisfying the criteria.
5. Choose the best option.
And as I leave you with that for this week, it is of course RAINING.
Decision made. I shall leave pruning some bushes and perennials in the garden ‘till another day…
