Have you ever been stalled out by a decision? Have you ever struggled with knowing what the right thing to do is? I know I have. On the emotional intelligence assessment, EQi (which I will probably write about later) one of the composite scores is decision making. Decision making is one of the more difficult things for me. I also make decisions as a feeler according to the Myers-Briggs Personality type assessment. This means that I consider how decisions will affect others or how it will make others feel. All this being said, making decisions can be challenging and can stall me out from taking any action. Then, I got married and the decisions we had to make were increased 10 fold. There were two of us and we had decisions about money, friends, family, events, work, vacations, weddings, etc. It seemed like every week we had a list of decisions that we had to make about how we were going to use our resources and our time. And I was finding myself either not making any decision because I was afraid what others might think, or experiencing decision fatigue.
One day while talking, Kara and I decided we needed to come up with a set of values for our family that would help drive us towards who we wanted to become. We believed that this would help us make decisions better and be more confident about those decisions. So, we started talking about who we wanted to become. We talked about how we want to be a couple that loves each other for all of time. We want to live below our means, so that we can be generous now and even more generous later. We want people around us that push us forward and challenge us. We want to be hard workers, but also enjoy life. We want Christ to be the center of our relationship, but the leader in our life.
After discussing who we wanted to become in this life, we came up with four values that are the basis for every decision we make now. Our four values are Spirit-Led, Stewardship, Relationships, and Fun. These are the filters for all of our decisions now. For example, when we have a decision about an event to go to we run it through these four values. Is this Spirit-Led. Is this something we feel like Christ is calling us to go to and would it benefit us and others. Is this event helping us become generous in ways we want to be or is it going to cost us money that is not part of our goal this month/year. Are there people going to this event that we consider great friends and we really want to spend time with or are we just going to be seen. Would going to this event be considered fun for both of us. Would it be good to go to break up the monotony or our week or would we be wishing it was over the whole time. These values now drive all decisions and take some of the pressure off.
Do you find yourself or your family struggling with decisions, living accidentally beyond your financial means, going to events/parties you don't really care about, or spending time with people that aren't really helping you get where you want to be? Maybe it's time to come up with some values. Then, run all your decisions through those values and stay true to them. You will find yourself 10 years from now closer to who you want to become.
I'll leave you with this quote: All people end up somewhere in life, but few end up there on purpose. - Craig Groeschel.
