Monday Morning Check In: Principled Decisions

In last week's Monday article, I shared my thoughts about making tough decisions. Today I wish to share some guidelines and principles for making those tough decisions. I offer three principles that I use to guide many of my decisions, and I find that when I rely on these principles, my decisions are a little bit easier to make. At least I can sleep at night with the knowledge that I have made the best decision that I could.

Remove money from the equation. I am often surprised that decisions become very easy to make once I eliminate money from the picture. I ask myself, if money were not involved here, what would I do? I am not sure why money can cloud our thinking, but I am certain that without money involved in the process, making a decision becomes clearer.

Look out for the lesser ones. There are many people out there who are not as fortunate as we are. There are some who do not have a voice or do not wield the power to encourage things to happen. These people are still valuable to the world and have worthwhile contributions to make. Sometimes others abuse their power or work to achieve their own agenda at the expense of others or the good of a group. In cases like this, I find it important to look out for those people who are unprotected or who need a champion of sorts.

Do the right thing. Often I find that if I say this little phrase that I will understand what I should be doing. I also find that when I tell someone, I know that you will do the right thing, I witness the person actually do the right thing. In the scheme of things, sometimes the right thing is also the hardest thing. Matthew 7:13 says: “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it." I have found this principle to be true, that the right decisions are sometimes the hardest ones to make. This difficulty does not in any way diminish the rightness of the decision.

There may be many other principles that we can rely on in our decision making. I welcome your ideas. I have had many a good night's sleep when I followed the above principles in my own decisions.

PS: I checked the calendar yesterday and discovered that it was the 26th Monday of 2013. We are halfway through the year. That discovery encouraged me to revisit my goals that I made last January. Better get cracking on what is left for the rest of the year.

Monday Morning Check In: Dare to Make the Tough Decisions

One of my favorite quotes is from Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series, in her book Eclipse. In this quotation moment, Bella, fresh from high school graduation, is in the car with her father, and they are discussing important decisions. Bella's father Charlie tells her: The right thing isn't always real obvious. Sometimes the right thing for one person is the wrong thing for someone else. So...good luck figuring that out.

Last week I wrote about life's challenges and riding roller coasters. A major part of life's challenges is making tough decisions. I label them "tough" because the real thing is not always the obvious answer and because sometimes what is right for someone is indeed wrong for someone else. There are so many twists and turns in the decision process that a person can get all turned inside out and twisted like a pretzel without actually finding any clear sense of direction or answer.

Still, decisions need to be made, whether it is about a toxic relationship, an elderly parent, or a disappointing work environment. Without decisions, we drift, we think less of ourselves, and we continue to devote unnecessary mental and emotional energy to something that needs to be taken care of.

I do not intend this article to be an explanation about how to make decisions. You can find many such articles readily on the Internet, and many of them have very sound suggestions for learning how to make decisions and to trust the decision-making process. No, my purpose in today's article is to urge you to take that first step toward searching the Internet and making the decision, not how to do it.

Actually, decisions are rather easy to make. We merely need to pick one option over others. I believe what keeps us mired in the indecisive fog is the possibility that our decision might be wrong or that it is not the best decision we could make considering the circumstances.

There is a psychic energy cost when we are faced with making decisions. Each thought we have costs us something in terms of time and mental energy, and in many cases, physical energy as well. When we vacillate in making a decision, we use up time and energy thinking of ways to avoid making the decision. Yes, we call this process "rational thought," but in a way this process is really a sum of tactics we use to avoid coming to a decision. Should I dump this guy or hang onto him for fear there isn't anyone else? Should we switch teachers? Should I do something about my elderly aunt? Should I quit my job? Unless we sit down and go through a decision analysis on paper, we probably are wasting a lot of our time and energy dithering about clouds and the weather in space and fooling ourselves into thinking that we are actually weighing factors that will weight and influence our ultimate decision. Uh huh.

I am fairly certain that we all have a few decisions that need to be made that we have not been making. So let us resolve this week to take care of that unfinished business. Find a quiet time, perhaps while you drink your coffee in the morning and contemplate your day, or while you drink your herbal tea in the evening and contemplate your day. Have a pen or pencil and paper handy, or for those of you who like to mind map, have that computer program or Smart Phone app handy. Here are my suggestions:

• Make a list of those open loops, those subjects that you need to make a decision about. Merely list them. Do not attempt to solve these issues at this moment. We are removing emotion for the time being and merely making a list of items that need our attention in some fashion.

• After you have made your list, turn your emotional side back on and look through the list for the one thing that makes your stomach turn, your fingers grow cold, or your heart anxious. This is probably the one thing that most needs your attention right now. Let us take that one item off the list and put it on a separate piece of paper.

• Now you can begin to analyze your options. If you mind map or practice clustering, go ahead and do that. (You can search the Internet for more information about mind mapping or clustering as idea-generating tools). If you prefer, you may also write columns of pros and cons. I sometimes use an outline program, because I find that I can backtrack my own thoughts, spark new ideas, and organize my thinking as I go along. Sometimes a decision has many steps or parts to it, and making a list will reveal any of the possibilities that something else is standing in the way of making a decision. For example, if I want to sell my horse, I may vacillate in my decision about selling the horse because I have no idea how I would go about the horse-selling process. Making my various lists will reveal these initial steps that I need to take in order to position myself for a potential sale.

• Finally, take a step on your decision. Do something. Anything. Any small step that acts upon your decision. Why?

• First, we sat down and wrote about it, even if all we did was make a list. The act of sitting down and writing is a step that will help to break whatever inertia we created when we gave ourselves permission to wallow in the mental fog we pretend is the act of decision-making.

• Second, when we take a step in any direction, special things start to happen. It is as if the energy we created just by moving or looking in a particular direction starts drawing other things like a magnet to us. If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours. -- Henry David Thoreau. Countless times I have thought about a particular person or considered a particular subject, and the person will call me or I will receive unexpected information about the subject. I am familiar with reticular activation -- that phenomenon that makes us see yellow cars every place after we have bought our own yellow car -- but this energetic coincidence seems bigger. Without this magical step in a particular direction, all the wonderful synergistic coincidences will not spark.

• Third, dithering about decisions makes the decision-making process exhausting and difficult. Making a decision is actually ridiculously easy to do. What makes the process difficult is that we are generally afraid that we will make the wrong decision. Having made several wrong decisions myself, let me assure you that it is alright to change your mind. I am told that pilots make hundreds if not thousands of course corrections in the course of a flight plan. Why could we not do that too? When we make a decision, if it is not the right one, we will probably figure that out in moments. Changing our minds is perfectly acceptable. Our paths are lined with different doorways that lead to many new hallways that ultimately end up in many new places. Our decision today is merely one of the many possible decisions that we could make. Lawyers understand this, which is why civil contracts provide for various remedies in the event that circumstances change and different economic decisions need to be made. Need to break a lease? Go right ahead, because your current lease contract provides for solutions.

• A good friend asked me for some advice once about a career change: giving up his music career in favor of working full time in the website design business, which he currently does on a part time basis. He told me that his parents supported the decision to change careers and that his wife supported his not making the change because she feared that he would miss the music too much. My advice? Who did you argue with? I asked. My friend actually laughed, because that gave him the answer he needed. Apparently his wife knew him best of all. I learned this decision-making technique years ago when I was puzzled about which high school class ring I should buy. I asked everyone for their opinion, and then I realized that I argued with everyone who picked something other than the color that I ultimately selected. In that I had my answer.

This week, let us take a few moments out of our schedule and make a few of those decisions that we have delayed making. What are some issues that you need to face?

Monday Morning Check In: Golden ZigZag

I learned many things when I studied law, but I want to talk about two things today, because I think they might help parents reach some insight about problems in the parent-child relationship and how to create positive, effective solutions. One item is the directed verdict. The other is the golden zig zag.

When one side in a trial finishes presenting its case, the other side may ask for a directed verdict. This is a request that the judge take the case away from the jury, basically saying that the first party did not prove one or more crucial elements of its case. When we learned about this concept in school, we likened it to looking at one side of your hand. When you look at one side of your hand, you are unable to see the other side, and vice versa when you turn your hand over to see the other side. Asking for a directed verdict means that you think you can tell everything there is to know about how to decide a case just by looking at one side of the hand.

Our perspective is like a directed verdict sometimes. We only see one side and do not have the richness of considering the other side to fill out the complete picture. Intelligent folk strive to be open-minded, considerate, and aware of many perspectives, but let us face the fact that we are not that successful at it when our emotions are at stake. When a parent and child are at odds with each other, it is so easy for the parent to reach conclusions as to the reasons why a child is behaving a particular way. The danger is that the parent is not giving enough reflection to the situation to consider what other perspective might explain what is happening.

Those of us who studied Aristotle and his philosophy in school may recall his golden mean, that moral behavior is the desirable middle or mean between two extreme points: one of excess and one of deficiency. I studied under a wonderful professor, Dean J. Spader, and he wrote an article entitled “Individual rights vs. social utility: The search for the golden zigzag between conflicting fundamental values.” You can find this article in the Journal of Criminal Justice, 1987, vol. 15, issue 2, pages 121-136, if you would like to read the entire article. I am only going to reference one tiny part of the article that caught my interest many years ago and which has stuck with me as a decision-making tool for many years. If you are a fan of Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, then you will be familiar with the four quadrants that Covey uses to determine what is important and urgent. Other authors have suggested a similar quadrant box for decision-making. Here is an example of the quadrant box:

Quadrant Box

The quadrant box basically sets out two positives in box one (upper left) and two negatives in box 4 opposite it (bottom right). There are two other combinations of boxes one and four that appear in boxes two and three. Covey used the box to make lists of things along with their importance and urgency factors. Box one was “important and urgent,” box four was “not important and not urgent,” and you can figure out how boxes two and three were completed.

In Spader’s article, he wrote about the struggle to balance social versus individual rights. While it was clear to Spock in Star Trek parlance — “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few” — in reality our social and governmental structures struggle daily with this issue. In essence, rather than search for the mean point between two extremes, Spader showed how we made “zigzags” among the boxes as different needs and rights came to the forefront related to different situations.

OK, you are thinking, this is interesting, but where are you going with this? Where is the usual Monday Morning Check In discussion about life and improving our habits and character? I am getting to that. I just wanted to be sure you had the same tools at your disposal that I want to use: the directed verdict hand and the golden zigzag.

Last week was an interesting week for me as a teacher observer. Some of my best studio moms were struggling mightily with child behavior issues. Now there are many possible reasons for the behaviors we saw: school is out, vacation bible school or summer day camps have started, routines are altered, etc. Kids and their parents are just starting to figure out what the schedule is going to be for the summer. As I watched though, I saw how easy it was for my best studio parents to fall into the trap of the directed verdict – seeing just one side of the hand. I understand the reason for this, because a lot of emotion is attached to any part of the parent-child relationship.

I call these my best studio parents because they are open to discussing the problems with me and reflecting on possible solutions. They are also open to hearing any possible observations I have about what might be going on. And I admit, I can be pretty frank about what I see. I am in a unique position as a teacher observer who sees the parent and child maybe once or twice a week. I am not easily inured by the day to day grind, so I can sometimes see quite easily what might be going on. I also have the advantage of watching a pattern unfold from week to week.

I will not relate the personal stories of my studio families from last week. Suffice it to say that we had lovely conversations about what could be going on. I offered up the observation that things were not quite so one-sided if we were to take a step back from the directed verdict and look for the golden zigzag. There are many perspectives and each has its own possibility for directing us to a particular verdict. The truly reflective teacher and parent will instead search to follow the golden zigzag, which will consider and balance all the possibilities.

I will leave you with one personal story that a parent volunteered to share. In this case the parent and child had struggled last week because the parent’s work routine had changed once school let out. That meant that the child’s practice routine changed, and the parent had not been able to work out a great solution yet. This week the parent still had not worked out a good solution, but she had found a way to resolve most of the practicing drama issues.

Mom said she spent time reflecting on what she wanted rather than what she did not want. In this case, she wanted to get back into a practice routine that centered on practice rather than drama issues, despite her summer work schedule changes. This week she resolved her previous week's problems by doing these things:

• Mom worked to change her attitude and make practicing more fun again, instead of a chore.
• Mom still had not figured out a great schedule, but she did put practice sessions before something else that the child would want to do, such as playtime.
• Mom kept it simple and fun.
• Mom used grandma and the child’s younger cousin to re-inspire the child to play by having grandma and cousin serve as an audience.
• Mom worked to see more good things in the child’s playing rather than things that needed to be corrected.

Bravo, mom! Rather than facing the situation as “this is the way things are, and you just have to get over it,” mom looked for the golden zigzag. Judging by the success mom reported to me at the end of the week, I would say that mom had found it.

Happy zigzagging!

Monday Morning Check In: Making Tough Decisions

I am back home again in Texas after spending three very interesting and fulfilling weeks in Rome, Italy. I played a lot of piano and violin and had a lovely time becoming even more familiar with this wonderful city. Although this blog post is late, I hope you will still find it useful as a Monday Morning Check In.

Recently a good friend of mine was faced with a tough decision that related to his future in the music industry and whether he might receive a letter of recommendation to benefit his future. I found that watching my friend go through the process of making a decision left me with some useful informational steps to making a decision.

Curb Your Emotions

Some of us do not handle change or confrontation well, and in many such cases, change comes dressed in the attire of perceived confrontation, which leads to our angry response. I am one of those personality types that often responds to the perception of confrontation with anger. Therefore, I strive to make my first response line up with the scripture verse observation of Psalm 15:1: “A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” Emotions come from our perceptions, so we should watch that our perceptions actually lead us in the direction that our emotions should go. I work to rein in any emotions that I might experience in favor of discovering the inner personality development issue that leads to my faulty presumption.

I ask myself a series of quick questions and follow that up with a few reminders that keep me on the track of solving whatever dilemma I found myself in.

What Else Could This Be About?

This question reminds me to pay attention to my presumptions. We all make them, but our presumptions are not always correct. Uncovering exactly what we are thinking and then discovering the possible reason why we create these types of presumptions usually reverses the flaws inherent in our heads, if we pay attention and work to make personal discoveries about the formation of our psyches.

Go to the Source

Have you ever noticed that people tend to complain to folks who have no power to make any effective change? For example, we might complain about something that our boss did, but instead of bringing our grievance directly to our boss, who is the one person who could clearly offer a solution, we tend to make our complaints to co-workers or our spouse – people who are clearly not in a position to do anything about our problem. The better course of action is to bring our grievances directly to the source. We should take care to work through our fears and directly approach the source of our problem. At the very least, we should visit with the source in order to make sure we have made accurate assumptions about what is actually going on.

Take Money Out of the Equation

I discovered early in my life as a “people watcher” that there are some decisions that are complicated by the presence of money. When I reframe the dilemma in a way that does not include the consideration of money, I find that most confusion completely vanishes. Then the directions become:

Take the Higher Road

What action should I take that gives me the highest position in the moral sense? Which position gives me the moral advantage? The other party might be arranging things to indicate a “perfect life” with no complications. The other party might try to use me (or my finances) to pursue a direction that I do not approve. In these cases, I believe that by taking the morally higher position, I place myself in a position that favors my overall global crusade.

Directions that I give myself to help me determine what the higher road might be include “do the right thing” or “whatever you do, do it with class.”

Own Our Own Contribution

When we take this step, we are showing the ultimate in maturity. This step encourages us to “own” our own contribution to the problem. I have heard many a psychologist state that it takes two people to generate a quarrel or disagreement. If we can dig down deep enough, we can find the resources we need to show us where we might be at fault or have taken steps to “fan the fires” or cause the problem to inflate. This step asks us to face our own motivation to keep the problem afloat. Instead, if we were to focus on changing our own attitudes and presumptions, we might eliminate the problem or at least alleviate it just by changing ourselves.

Sometimes it is easy to make a decision, and other times it is not. I find that if I consider the above questions and topics that I am ultimately satisfied with the decision I make.