ONE DECISION
When you engage and play, you build on the aliveness of life. You are meeting your yearnings while contributing everywhere you are. By orienting to these dynamic principles, you are showing up in ways that are uniquely you. If you have spent a week engaging and playing fully, you can see how much you can impact every moment of your life. You are becoming more aware of being a creator of your own life and taking responsibility for playing your part in the world. This week, you deepen your inquiry to live even more purposefully moment by moment by orienting to a larger compass in your life.
To Be or Not to Be? Live Your One Decision
This week, you focus on your One Decision and how to use it to empower your daily choices. Your One Decision is a commitment about how you are going to live your life. It is a powerful and transformative choice that can guide you in all of life’s situations. It is also a tool you can use to support your newly formed empowering beliefs as you learn to live your life with purpose and principles.
The One Decision is a personal commitment about how you are going to live your life. It is not a small step or a nice idea or a good decision. It is the One Decision you can make that will completely change your life. It is a compelling dedication to a way of being, a quality of life, or a higher principle or higher power. It is a decision so powerful that it becomes a touchstone you orient to when making every other decision. It is a personal commitment and is different for everyone.
For one person, their One Decision might be, “I live my life as an adventure.” For another person it might be, “I choose to live as if every moment matters,” or, “I stand for truth.” For still another it might be, “My One Decision is to be present, conscious, and engaged.” The words a person chooses do not really matter. It is a commitment you make in your heart, not in your head. The words aren’t as important as the feeling, and the commitment, that you experience.
Purpose and Your One Decision
Bob and Judith Wright discovered that people did not tap the full power of their purpose until they made their One Decision. On the other hand, people can make their One Decision, without identifying their purpose, and end up living purposefully. If you have identified your purpose, you’ll be driven to live it more deeply through your One Decision. If you haven’t identified your purpose, not to worry. By making your One Decision, you begin living it.
Your purpose gives you the why of your life, and your One Decision gives you the how. Purpose answers why you are and gives you focus, and the One Decision focuses on the core of who you are and how you live that—your way of being. Some people have actually called the One Decision “everyman’s road to purpose,” and it leads to purposeful living
Put together the why and the how, the purpose and the One Decision, and you are reaching to your highest, becoming all you can be, and serving as much as you can.
Using Your One Decision
Making and living your One Decision can be one of the most important and powerful steps you take in your life. By making your One Decision, you proclaim what is important to you and use that powerful declaration to guide your life.
You begin to see how you can use your One Decision as a guide for your everyday choices, a beacon to remind you about what matters when you are in doubt, and a touchstone to evaluate your life choices. Rather than living your life by rigid rules, you discover that your One Decision provides a lens through which to view and evaluate your choices: Is this in alignment with my One Decision or not? If it is, then go on. If not, you can readjust your course. The One Decision becomes an integral part of your Purposeful Leadership Process.
Want to Live a Great Life?
Have you ever wondered why relatively few people lead great lives and most people lead average lives at best? Like it or not, we each have the life that we have decided to have. Great lives require a great decision—the One Decision. By guiding your life by that One Decision, you will bring focus to your efforts, fulfillment in your days, and quality to your life. Explore what life can be like this week when you orient to One Decision!
Your One Decision is your commitment to living a life of MORE—more satisfaction, meaning, abundance, love, vitality, and intimacy. It is yours to make and yours to live.
It is the potential to influence every aspect of your life in positive ways. It supports you in manifesting your talents and using them to live your purpose in the world.
Your One Decision orients you in times of confusion and uncertainty, as well as in times of motivation and inspiration. It provides direction, clarity, support and compassion no matter where you are. All is well as you align to your One Decision. At its highest, the One Decision is a choice to accept the gifts of the universe, to claim and manifest the talents that were given to you and you alone. You are to become the most “you” you can be, to express your essence, and to live a purposeful and conscious life. There is no time like the present to decide what you want in your life, what matters to you most, and how you want to reflect that by how you live. Your One Decision can be the vehicle to help you live in alignment with what matters most to you.
The One Decision
Human beings have been making their One Decisions from the beginning of time. Buddha made it by sitting under the Bodhi tree. Moses made it and led the Jews out of Egypt to the promised land. Abraham made it and God responded. But the examples don’t end with religious history.
Existential philosophers emphasize the importance of choice and commitment to guide our decisions and our lives—and how shaping our life through our choices becomes what Sartre deemed our “life project.” Kierkegaard posits that life hinges on a single basic choice—to be a self or to flee from selfhood into a world of pleasure, escaping from responsibility and commitment. We either choose to live a life of sensory pleasure, the aesthetic life, or the ethical life, based on our commitment to principle and becoming who we can become.
Even Hollywood recognizes the concept of the One Decision. In the movie The Shawshank Redemption, Tim Robbins’ character says, “I guess it comes down to simple choice, really. Get busy living, or get busy dying.” Or probably the best-illustrated example is in the movie City Slickers. The trail boss (Jack Palance) leading the urban neurotic character (Billy Crystal) on a trail drive, raises one finger in the air and says “One thing, just one thing. You stick to that and everything else don’t mean S%*T!”
Live a Week of Your
One Decision
Main Assignment
This week, you practice living your life by your One Decision. You intend for your day to be a reflection of your One Decision and a further manifestation of your talents and gifts for the entire world to see and experience. If you haven’t already made your One Decision, you can test drive a One Decision for the week:
“I live my life as an adventure.”
“I am conscious, present, and engaged.”
“I follow my deepest yearnings and desires.”
“I am a stand for truth.”
“I live with an open heart.”
“I live as if every moment matters.”
A good default choice for your test drive is, “I live my life as an adventure.” If you live your life as an adventure, you’ll most likely end up experiencing all the other ‘flavors’ of One Decisions.
Use your One Decision to make your life choices this week—what to wear, what to eat, what to do after work, who you spend time with, how to be with your loved ones, even to plan your vacation.
Very-Able Assignments
Awareness, Action, and Application
You may find it helpful to use the following three-stage process in living your One Decision Awareness, Action, and Application, which you will cycle through two times over the course of the week.
You can also use Awareness, Action, and Application daily. In the morning, use Awareness to orient toward your day. In the evening, use Awareness to review your day and how you lived, or didn’t live, your One Decision for the day and plan how you can live it tomorrow. For Action, plan moves to implement your One Decision for the day and do them. Remember, your One Decision is how you live your life, a quality of being. For Application, go nuts in applying your One Decision—spontaneously apply it in as many situations as you can. Use it to inform your daily choices, activities, and ways of being.
Day 1 Awareness:
Read your One Decision to yourself. Notice where you have and have not lived the principle behind your One Decision in the past. For example, if your One Decision is to live life as an adventure, do an inventory of your adventures taken and not taken. Or if your One Decision is to live with an open heart, do an inventory where you have and have not lived with Heart.
Day 2: Action
Take a risk to live your One Decision today. Act on your yearning and deep desires, live an adventure, risk sharing your Heart with someone. You can customize it however you like, but plan several ways to take conscious action to live your One Decision today.
Day 3: Application
Live your One Decision throughout the day. Building on yesterday’s day of Action, experiment with your One Decision in as many ways as possible today. Frequently reorient to your One Decision and use it to inform your choices, activities, and ways of being. Use it to guide you at work, in your relationships, and your personal life. Take risks, try new behaviors. There is no right or wrong, simply live your One Decision to the best of your ability throughout the day.
Day 4: Awareness
Today is a day to take stock of where you’ve been so far in living your One Decision. What thoughts, feelings, or insights are you having? Review the awareness questions you answered on day one and notice how you’ve progressed since then. Then, give yourself a grade on how you think you’ve been doing in your assignment (1 to 10, 10 being the highest). Have you been going for it fully (10)? Or have you really been holding back (3)? Or are you avoiding it altogether (1)? Remember, no blame, shame, or justification. Simply deepen your awareness of how you have lived your One Decision.
Day 5: Action
As you did on day 2, you are going to take at least a few significant actions today to live your One Decision. Remember the score you gave yourself yesterday and set a goal to make a significant improvement on your score by the end of the day. Pick actions that will really help you deepen the way you are living your One Decision. After you’ve taken action, give yourself a new score on how you did with that action.
Days 6 and 7: Application
Live your One Decision all day during both of these days. Live days filled with Heart or Adventure or Desire or Truth. Review the scoring you gave yourself on the assignment in the previous rounds. Go for having two full days of living your One Decision at a score of 8 or more. Then note on your journal sheets what you did to apply your One Decision and how it impacted you and those around you over the entire week.
Write Your One Decision “Testimonial”
How have you changed since you made your One Decision? If you were the poster child for The One Decision, what would you say about your experience and your life? If you haven’t made your One Decision, imagine what you would like to be able to say about your life and write it up as a future testimonial. This will help you create a vision of your life guided by your One Decision.
Watch a Movie!
Watch a movie in which the main character makes and lives a One Decision. Use the movie to inspire you to live yours. Possibilities include: Field of Dreams, It’s a Wonderful Life, Jerry Maguire, The Lord of the Rings, Last Holiday, Keys to the Kingdom, Shawshank Redemption…
Examine your “Undecisions”
We all have made “undecisions” in our life, unconsciously adopting mistaken beliefs from our core matrix that influence our thoughts, perceptions, and decisions. These beliefs are derived from our foundational experiences and do not reflect our current reality. You may have unconsciously decided that you aren’t worthy, you are not enough, the world is not a safe place, you are unlovable, or that the world is scarce. These decisions are made from inaccurately filtered data and prevent us from having the life we deeply desire. When we are not conscious of our matrix and not conscious to our One Decision, we default to our undecisions. These undecisions influence our life choices and daily decisions. Make a list and journal about your undecisions and the power they have in your life. Consider the positive power your One Decision can have in its place.
Use your One Decision to change the quality of an interaction and use it to change the quality of a day—whether you’re at work, with your family, or with your friends. There is no situation where you cannot apply your One Decision.
Your main assignment is to live your One Decision daily and to apply it to make even the smallest decisions in your life. Test drive a One Decision or a refinement of a One Decision you may have already selected. Your One Decision is an integral component of living purposefully.
Apply your One Decision in as many situations, with as many people, in as many ways as you can this week. Keep revisiting your One Decision to make your daily smaller decisions. Ask yourself what action, thought, or way of being would be in alignment with my One Decision—and then do it! Experience the power of the One Decision!
