Big Decisions
by Rhoda Makoff, Ph.D. & Jeffrey Makoff, Esq.
We all know somebody who has tossed and turned, maybe for years, over a major choice. Perhaps you
have. Perhaps you are doing so right now.
Big Decisions are associated with anxiety, fear, depression, frustration, pain, obsession and that
unpleasant set of feelings called “pressure”. Some people are skilled at evading Big Decisions.
Nobody escapes all of them forever.
If you’re serious about improving your life, whether through career advancement, resolving a specific
personal or business problem, or “changing your life direction”, you must be able to identify and
make difficult choices.
Fearing a choice that will define your life is a natural response. Nonetheless, your first decision
must be to challenge your fears and go confidently forward to make any Big Decision that you face.
To improve your life, you must embrace your freedom to make choices. All of your Big Decisions
emanate from the freedom to choose, even when you’re forced to select between “bad” options. When a
situation’s outcome is certain, you deal with it. If the outcome is bad, you cope. Coping is not big
decision making.
Keep in mind the ultimate source of your Big Decisions: you’re alive and you have choices. By seizing
an active role in your own major decisions, you affirm your values and control your destiny.
Important decisions begin with your freedom and power to choose. Be glad you have that discretion.
Hold onto it and learn to use it wisely.
A Big Decision is one that will change you, and you know it. A Big Decision may alter the course of
your life for months, years, or a lifetime. Moreover, how you make the Big decision may affect you as
much as the decision itself. The reason is that you not only experience the consequences of the
decisions you make, but you also learn about (and adjust) your decision-making process as the result
of past decisions.
A major decision, even a tough, painful or sorrowful one, presents an opportunity for you to define,
refine, and express you individual approach to life. You won’t revel in every decision, especially
the Big Decisions. Yet you will grow immensely from each experience.
Excerpted from the book “Get Off The Fence! 10 + 1 Steps to help you make that Big Decision” by Rhoda
Makoff, Ph.D. and Jeffrey Makoff, Esq.
Get Off the Fence!: The 10 + 1 Steps to Help You Make That Big Decision
© Copyright 2003 by Rhoda Makoff and Jeffrey Makoff. All Rights Reserved.
Reprinted with permission by the authors.