The Two Keys to True Decisiveness

            To return now to the reality from the appearance, there are two qualities you need to cultivate in order to become truly decisive. The first is imagination.  The second is discipline.

           

Imagination: You use your imagination to understand as fully as you can how your decision might work out in practice. The mother of a two year who is contemplating moving to the country must imagine what, her decision will mean when her child is of school age, and when he is a thoroughly sociable teenager. The confirmed bachelor contemplating marriage will need all his resources of imagination, and more, to foresee how every detail of his life will change. In all decisions, the more imaginatively you can approach them, the more able you will be to make a decision you can stick to in the future.

            Discipline is what you need to progress from early uncertainty to a point where you know what to do.  You will face up to and assess the implications your imagination has enabled you to identify.  You will stop when the deadline arrives. You will plan who to talk to and when.

            Of course, much of this series of articles up to now has been concerned with practical ways you can cultivate both imagination and discipline in your decision making.  For it is not easy to be decisive.  In a world of uncertainty, where at any time something totally unexpected may happen, it is one of the most difficult qualities to achieve.