Have you ever sat at a crossroad, looking left, looking right? Looking left and right and then doing it again. Sometimes, standing at a fork in the road gets you stuck. Which way gets you where you truly want to be? You aren’t entirely weird if standing at a crossroad makes you question where you really want to go, even if you knew exactly where that was when you started the journey.
Most people hesitate when they actually get to some dramatic fork in the road. Two choices. You know it’s time to move forward but you look left and then right. Which direction is best?
Many problems begin when standing at this fork.
As Yogi Berra said, “When you come to the fork in the road, take it!”
This, of course, means one simple thing: you must GO. Not ponder, not debate, not weigh the pros and cons, create a spread sheet or have another meeting. You don’t need to chew on it some more. Oh my, insanity begins if you choose a life at the fork in the road.
Many in business and in life need a process. They need to think about it. They need to perfect everything before they do it. They want 2, 3 and 4 meetings to discuss, rehash and drill down. Is that you? Do you hesitate and perhaps miss out on the opportunity that has you standing at that fork in the road? Do you fear making the wrong decision?
The good news? THERE IS NO RIGHT DECISION. It’s just a decision.
If you go right and travel that path, you will encounter many things that will give evidence that you made the right decision. You’ll feel elation…until you reach a bump and experience the feeling that you make the wrong decision.
I challenge you to name one path that you’ve taken that didn’t come with both glorious sunrises and scuffed knees? Let’s say you went left and 3 miles down that road you decided to leave the fork. You encounter something breathtaking that reassured you that going left was the best decision you could have made. By the 5th mile, you wonder if you should have gone right. The path has become rutted and gloomy and is no longer as awesome as you perceived it to be 2 miles ago.
Now you find yourself at another fork in the road and you say to yourself, “I should have gone right.” But you do not know what would have been that direction. So you sit there. Ponder. Regret. Wish you would have gone right. It’s madness but your mind is often hard to turn off.
In order to move forward, you must “take” the fork in the road, as Yogi Berra suggests. A right or wrong answer doesn’t exist.
When faced with any decision, you are guaranteed to make a mistake. If you go right your road will be filled with glory and grief. If you go left, your road with filled with glory and grief. If you stand at the fork and don’t make a decision, you will only get only grief and lost time. No matter which road you take, left or right, you’ll eventually find yourself at another fork. If you face it debating whether you took the right road in the first place, you are guaranteed to make mistakes.
The next time you are dragging your feet, needing more time, delaying, procrastinating and trying to decide what’s best- left? Or right? Just remember, it makes no difference.
Get to the fork in the road, go forward. Throw your hat into the wind, take that turn and never think about the other direction. You will never know what might have been. But you are guaranteed that whatever the choice, life is what you make it.