Life is full of choices. Almost every second of every day each of us makes a decision.
The easy ones are barely noticeable. The difficult choices, however, often cause us to be indecisive for days. While it’s important to be methodical when facing tough decisions, you have to make a choice sooner or later. Whether it’s a business decision or a life decision, mastermind coach and mentor Aaron Walker often says to his clients “Indecision is killing you.”
Everyone makes bad choices at one time or another, but learning to minimize these errors and mitigate the impact of unwise decisions is crucial to long-term success. Aaron talks about choosing wisely and how to rebound from bad decisions in his book View From the Top. He begins one of the chapters with some words of wisdom from an old friend. Aaron had made a decision that was holding him back, and needed to choose a different path. However, he was having difficulty coming to terms with the fact that he made a mistake. To help him move forward, his friend gave him this bit of advice “You know why trees live to be hundreds of years old? Because they are flexible. When the gale-force winds blow, they bend. No matter the direction of the wind, they flex. If they were rigid, they would snap. That’s why they live to be hundreds of years old.”
What Aaron’s friend told him in subtle terms was that he needed to be more flexible. He needed to pivot and recover from the choice that was holding him back from maximizing his potential in other areas. When we have trouble coming to terms with our mistakes, we become rigid and can allow an unwise choice to have a long-lasting impact.
Aaron had started a construction company, and got in a dilemma when he realized he was trading time for money instead of building passive income streams that don’t require him to be there at all times in order to make money. Aaron’s choice to enter the construction business led him to say “I wasn’t operating in an area of giftedness; instead, I was in a profession that I was not enjoying, and it was affecting every area of my life.” He then recounts the moment when he chose to leave the industry, saying “it was like an anvil was taken off my shoulders.”
After leaving the construction business, Aaron went on to become one of the most successful life and business coaches in the industry, and wrote the book View From the Top as a manual to help entrepreneurs choose wisely when confronted by difficult decisions. He uses Bible verses like Proverbs 11:2 to stay grounded when making decisions and gives his readers real-life examples of choosing wisely through application of scripture.
It takes an honorable man to admit a mistake, and it takes a lot of courage to reverse course after making a poor choice. Aaron always advises his coaching clients to choose wisely, but when they don’t, he shows them that there is always an opportunity to learn from mistakes and rebound from a bad decision. He tells his mastermind groups and life coaching clients to “Always be in a state of personal assessment. We never get to a point where we know everything, and sometimes we learn through adversities.”
If you keep a positive attitude, and you are willing to let trusted advisors tell you when you haven’t made a wise choice, you have the potential to enjoy a life full of success and significance. Pre-order your copy of View From the Top today to learn more about making wise choices in business and in life.