The 10-10-10 Solution

Don’t Decide by Rolling a Dice: Use 10-10-10

A friend told me about Suzy Welch’s 10-10-10 not long ago. At the time it struck an immediate cord with me because I was in the midst of evaluating the impact of one of my choices of just over 10 years ago. We all have decisions we later regret or wish we had made differently, but we trust we made the best decision at the time knowing it was made with the knowledge, experience, and education we had then, as well as that they met a particular need at the time.

It made me think at the time I wish I had made a few different decisions at different times in my life. When you face a lot of different tugs and pulls, you want to do what feels right for you and please yourself; after all, that’s who you live with the most. Having Suzy Welch’s 10-10-10 available is definitely supportive of beginning to make better decisions – a wonderful tool to have in our tool chest of decision-making skills.

It’s hard to make good, thoughtful decisions. We’ve all made decisions by guilt, gut, instant gratification, or reactively instead of pro-actively at one time or another. Sometimes, especially for the hard decisions, we might feel that it’s easier to let our emotions decide or otherwise not decide at all. So how are we supposed to make our decisions differently? It’s about having incredibly candid conversations with ourselves.

10-10-10 invites you to

• Create the life you want, decision by decision;
• Make decisions that factor in the short-term, mid-term and long-term consequences;
• Make decisions with values.

Here are some tips for practicing the 10-10-10:

1. Ask yourself the 10-10-10 Consequences. Think of the consequences or impact of your decisions in 10 minutes, 10 months and 10 years. Ask yourself, “What impact will this decision have on my life in 10 minutes? ...in 10 months? ...in 10 years?”
2. Check in with what matters to you. Ask yourself, "What life do I want to be creating? Will this decision get me closer to the life I want? Who do I want to be? Where do I want to be? How do I want to live? Is this the marriage/job/family I want? What kind of partner/mother/employee/etc. do I want to be?" Given those answers, then what is the best decision for me?
3. Know that the long-term answer doesn’t always win. You’ve got to be spontaneous.

Suzy says that at some point she realized it was important to bring in her values. You can make decisions factually on what the best outcome will be, and that is a good first step. Great decisions are the ones that are in line with who you really are and what values you espouse.

Begin today to review how you make your decisions. What positive changes can you see being manifested when using a tool such as what we learn from Suzy’s approach?

Until next time, embrace your inner wisdom.

Namaste,
Karen

References:
Welch, Suzy, "10-10-10: A Life Transforming Decision" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keK8qQltSUQ