VERY often we go through life hoping a problem will go away without making any decision, because we are scared of doing the wrong thing. But I do feel that even a wrong decision is better than not deciding at all. There is this little joke about a little girl talking to her mother: “Mommy, what happens when a car gets too old and banged up to run?” she asks. “Well,” her mother says, “someone sells it to your father.” Ha, ha, ha. Here’s a father who always decided on the wrong kind of car! I think I have bought a couple of cars like that! Like most people, my life is punctuated by decisions that did not turn out the way I’d hoped. But we cannot always be expected to make the best decisions. Sometimes we simply don’t have enough information. And other times, there just isn’t a good decision anywhere to be found! All we can really do is make decisions the best way we know how and act on them. Things change only when decisions are made.
Before his rise to political fame, Maryland Congressman Kweisi Mfume walked a path of self-destruction. He dropped out of high school. A few years later, he robbed a pedestrian in order to join a street gang. Mfume spent the following years drinking and troublemaking with the gang.
A turning point came one summer night when he abruptly decided he could no longer continue on his present course. He decided to earn his high school equivalency certificate and later graduated magna cum laude from Morgan State University in Baltimore. He then went on to earn a graduate degree at Johns Hopkins University. When Mfume ran for Congress in 1986, his opponents tried to use his old mistakes against him. But his achievements since he left a troubled past behind captivated an electorate who voted him into office by an overwhelming 87 percent. He was on a collision course with total failure until he made a decision and people respected him for his decision to change his life and voted him their leader.
What changes your life is not learning more, though education is important. What changes your life is making decisions – the best decisions you can make – and acting on them. It’s been accurately said: “Your decisions determine your direction, and your direction determines your destiny.” Or put another way, ”The decisions you make … make you..!”
Today as the sensex rises and shares go up, I keep hearing these words, “I wish I had invested in shares a few months ago, I would have been a millionaire!” “Why don’t you invest today?” I ask. “I don’t know whether I should!” they say hesitantly, and nobody needs to go farther to find out why they are not millionaires! Whatever you face today, decide, just decide. It may be about changing a habit, changing a situation that is draining you; whatever: Just decide..!
