By Steve Moran

What advice would you give me?

Have you ever had a situation where you had a tough decision to make and simply could not figure out the right course of action? Most likely it was not a moral decision but a decision that would or could have a significant impact on your life and perhaps on the lives of people in your circle of influence. Maybe it was whether to …

  • Hire or fire
  • Ask someone to marry you, or maybe you have been proposed to
  • Leave a marriage or relationship
  • Accept a new job
  • Leave an old job
  • Make some big decision relative to your kids
  • Start a new business
  • Shut down a business

You asked friends and trusted advisors for advice, and yet that did not really provide much help in figuring out what to do, or to maybe even that you shouldn’t do anything.

2 Paths to Resolution

Here are two proven ways to resolve your challenge:

  1. If a bunch of people are all giving you more or less the same advice and you are not happy with the advice, it most likely means you are simply not ready to make a decision. You should at that point decide to not decide for a period of time. Revisit it again in six months or a year or three months. But for the time being, quit worrying about it, thinking about it.

  2. Imagine for a moment that it is not you but your best friend or your trusted business colleague who has this exact same problem, same decision that needs to be made. They come to you looking for help, wondering what they should do.

    What advice would you give them?

    Take that advice. It is almost certainly the right advice for you in your particular life circumstance.

It is important to remember that most of these kinds of decisions are not decisions where there is an absolute right and wrong, but rather they are decisions that are right or wrong for you in your current circumstances, in that particular moment.