Jan 17, 2012

Willpower Works 6: Decisions















One of the traits of your Will is the ability to make Decisions. Life offers Millions of options from which you chose what to focus on. Deciding is the process to focus on one thing and not another. If you do not like deciding that's because you are reluctant to sacrifice one option over another. Decision-reluctance also comes from knowing that too much deciding can lead to Fatigue (exhausted attention, exhausted willpower). This type of Fatigue is well known to every reader. Have you ever felt exhausted after shopping for clothes, where you tried on several dozen skirts or were asked to chose between dozens of shirts? Did you know that sweets and gossip magazines fill the check-out areas of Supermarkets because advertisers know that your impulse-control is most fatigued after you have walked through the the Supermarket and made dozens of decisions? Did you know that, according to scientific studies, prisoners that get parole are usually (65% of the time) the ones that are presented to judges early in the morning after breakfast, before they have become fatigued by making decisions all day? Have you ever gone to a restaurant and, being too tired to decide, said to the waiter "Can you recommend something?".

Lack of energy causes people to say "I want others to decide for me". We then ask people perceived as authorities to make decisions for us. Sometimes that is the most relaxing thing to do, but if you do it too often you give away your power. That is the opposite of Reality Creation. You can exercise both your energy-muscle and your willpower muscle by becoming used to making more decisions pro-actively, by letting go of stuff that is not good for you (which requires a decision), by being less concerned with how you look in front of others, by prioritizing and by intending to stay fresh and awake despite the many decisions to make. 

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