A decision is a choice. In the wealthiest nation in the history of the world, sometimes, making a choice isn’t the most difficult activity. Sticking to the choice is.

Our trait for this month is decisiveness. We want to be people who can make a decision.

A friend once told me I needed to decide between the options I was facing. In a way, I was doing the very opposite of deciding… I was procrastinating. When we procrastinate, we delay choosing. Or maybe I should say we delay our final choice.

She said, “Mike, you know what it means to decide, don’t you?” The way she said it, I knew there was a punch line coming, so I said, “No Liz, what does it mean?”

“Decide is like homicide. You kill all the other options.”

The two words are from the same source. The Latin word that became the “cide” part of de-cide does mean to cut. The “de” means off. Decide means to cut off.

A decisive person makes the choice. Rather than straddling, waffling, questioning, shopping, pondering, or wavering, they cut off the other options. They move past the choice into their future without those other options.

Decisive people commit to a path and kill the other options.

Doing nothing is a choice. We have a choice. We can waste our energy making choices or invest our energy making sound choices work. All we have to do is decide.