In short, the cure is to have a decided heart.  Let’s talk about it.

We’re covering the fourth decision in the book The Seven Decisions by Andy Andrews.

Andrews calls this The Certain Decision.

Having a decided heart is a choice we make for ourselves. We can’t wait for all the information to come to us or for all the circumstances to line up perfectly.

Instead, we make our choices and we stick to them.

*An Important Note*

Before we go further with this, I want to address something that goes through my mind and maybe yours as well.

The first thing I think of with this decision is marriage. That no matter what, we make our decision and we stay with that person.

And yes, that is what we vow. That’s what we want.

However, after watching the end of the marriages for two of my kids, there are times that no matter how decided you are, things will still end.

Change still happens.

If a spouse decides to move out and refuses to work on the marriage or continue to be together, that doesn’t mean you didn’t have a decided heart when you married.

If a spouse becomes abusive and dangerous, the answer is to leave that situation.

Whenever new, crucial information presents itself to us, we need to re-evaluate our path.

BUT…

Often we have a tendency to re-evaluate based on things that aren’t deal-breakers. We tend to make too much out of small things.

That’s where the wisdom of the Decided Heart can help us most often.

An Example

Let’s use my decision to write Flourish52 as an example.

Last January, I decided to document my journey from languishing to flourishing by writing this newsletter/blog.

I made the Certain Decision that I wanted to move in the direction of flourishing. On that part, my heart was decided and still is.

However, the decision to write about it has been less decided.

More than a year later, I’m still writing and you’re reading my efforts right now.

But nearly every week, my mind tries to talk me out of writing for Flourish52. I battle with thoughts like, “it doesn’t matter if I do this” and “no one will notice if I don’t send out an email this week” and “I don’t even have a plan to grow this newsletter, so what’s the point?”

On and on, the chatter in my mind tries to talk me out of writing.

If my heart was truly decided, this internal dialogue would go away. And possibly, the newsletter would grow and become more focused.

Burn the Boats

Andy Andrews gives the analogy of burning the boats as a way to describe what it’s like to have a decided heart.

He tells it so much better than I could.

We don’t have to “burn the boats” in our own lives, but it does sometimes help to remove the exits for ourselves, at least in our own hearts.

Sometimes, life does this for us. There are many entrepreneurs who found their businesses finally succeeding once they were expecting a child. At that point, they found a higher purpose for succeeding and they had a deadline. What they’d been struggling to do before, suddenly started to really happen for them.

A smaller example of this is the amount of work we get done on the day before vacation compared to a normal working day.

It’s hard to maintain this level of focus and purpose, but if we have a Decided Heart, that will carry us day by day through the habits we need to succeed in our goals.

What about you?

Do you have areas of your life where you need to make a decision and stick to it?

I’ve found that the energy I spend on waffling depletes the energy I have for forward motion.

The cure for that is a decided heart.