Becoming successful in life is more about decision making than it is about effort or hard work. We’ve all been there. That moment when we have to decide between one thing and another. It could be anything. Something as small as whether to pay the electricity bill or buy gas with the rent money. Or something as big as whether to change careers in turbulent times or stay the course and face misery on a daily basis. Making a decision can be frustrating and liberating at the same time, because you know it will change your life and alter it forever.

While everyone tells you about hard work and its rewards, rarely do people come up and tell you that they are where they are in life because of a gamble worthy decision or two that they made a while ago. Even rarer are people who tell you about how speedy decision making helped them find firm footing when they were surrounded by chaos and uncertainty. This is because the most closely guarded secret to becoming successful is, you guessed it, QUICK DECISION MAKING.

Unsuccessful people aren’t wrong all the time, but they share one common trait that is obvious to those who look closely. They are very poor decision makers.

Poor decision making skills reflect badly on your life, your work, your business, your personality and multiple other things that are your essentials for growth. Becoming successful is not so much about decisions as the time you take deciding them. One can make a really good decision, like say, a decision to change careers after realizing that the current career is going nowhere. Now this person can wait for really long, grow old and make no difference with the decision. On the other hand, they can make the decision really fast in spite of the risks and turn his or her life around with remarkable results.

Either way, this habit is the No.1 cause of failure. If you hope to even have a long shot at becoming successful, you have to get rid of one thing and one thing only:

INDECISIVENESS!

It affects many more things than you realize. People drag their feet on decisions for too long before they realize that their dreams have grown stale and they are growing older by the day. Too much time has passed by and any success they could have hoped to achieve would be irrelevant anyway.

The worlds leading Peak Performance coach Tony Robbins once said:

“Studies have shown that the most successful people make decisions rapidly because they are clear on their values and what they really want for their lives. The same studies show that they are slow to change their decisions, if at all. People who fail usually make decisions slowly and change their minds quickly, always bouncing back and forth. Just decide!” – Anthony Robbins

There is magic in good decision making. Speed is one thing, and good decision making is entirely another. Becoming successful requires a delicate mix of both these traits. You can make a bad decision fast and drive yourself into the ground or you can make a good decision late and suffer the consequences mentioned above. Sometimes, there is no such thing as a good or a bad decision. There are only decisions and more decisions. Successful people are those who make a large number of good decisions, fast. No one can be perfect and you will be wrong some of the time. But if you make a decision immediately, you will tide over bad results if any, sooner than you think you will.

What prompt decision making gives you a fighting chance at survival in the big bad world of competing ideas and businesses. Anyone will agree that a fighting chance is any day better than assured failure. A decision made fast might go wrong, but a decision that’s never made will definitely go wrong. The accuracy of this logic is evident in the fact that the most successful people on earth attribute their success to fast decision making.

Life is full of decisions. That’s how we all go from one place to another while also growing in the process. If you’re not making any decisions you’re stuck in the same place while the world surges ahead. Wherever you are and whatever you do, making a decision is not only important in becoming successful, but it’s the only way you can ever hope to grow and turn your life around for the better. All that you need is already with you. So free up your mind, take a deep breath and make those decisions fast. Your success almost wholly depends on prompt and good decision making.

(Video) Tony Robbins – Decision Making Is Your POWER