Decisions Reflections by Dave LaRue

Do you ever just stop and think about why you are where you are? Why the people in your life are here? How you arrived at the level of success you’re experiencing? Why you live where you live? How you came to be with your life partner? How you chose what your vocation is?

It’s all about decisions. You know I love to talk about decisions.

How have your decisions created opportunities for you? How have your decisions made you miss opportunities? I love asking myself questions like this mostly because it confirms to me life is about the choices we make or don’t make.

Having a keen awareness of the power of your choices emphasizes the critical need to understand what you really want in life. If you don’t know, how are you going to make your decisions? How are you going to arrive at a great place?

Just leaving it to chance or letting others decide for you usually sets you up for disappointment and maybe, like Peggy Lee, singing “Is That All There Is?”


Here are some questions to reflect on. Even if you don’t need a breakthrough right now, chewing on these might just shake something loose. Sometimes, to make a new kind of choice, we have to go deep.



1. Why do you wake up happy? Why do you wake up sad? Why do you wake up feeling numb?

Whichever you have felt recently, which decisions lead to this?



2a. Think of something you want right now. Maybe an object, an outcome, maybe someone’s agreement, approval, attention, or desire. Why do you want it? If you’ve never had it, what gave you the idea to start? If you’ve had it before, why do you choose to want this and not something new? What attracts you most to the choice to keep wanting?



2b. What else might that want be about? How do you decide which desires are yours and which come from outside of you? Have you ever wanted something because someone else wanted it? Have you ever wanted someone else to want something—even though it didn’t benefit you directly? How do other people’s wants influence and inspire yours at this moment?



3. When you look at your life as a series of decisions, does it make you feel you are a better decision maker now than in the past? Or do you feel like you have fewer key choices now than before?

Do you feel like obligations do more deciding for you now than in the past, or vice-versa?

What kind of choices did you make more in the past? What were they about?

Do some of the “big” choices you make now cause you to overlook the “smaller” ones? Does this make you happy or sad? Are there “smaller” choices you wish felt “bigger?” Are there “big” choices you wish felt smaller?

Dave