Dalton Roberts, Guest Journalist

We received Dalton's Sunday Journal yesterday, and it was too good not to share with you. So, with Dalton's permission, I'll reprint it here.

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Eric Butterworth reminded me of Norman Vincent Peale (one of my heroes) when I first came across his writings. Over the years I bought some of his books and each one gifted me with at least one idea that lodged in my mind and would not go away. In The Universe is Calling the idea that got me was, "Don't try to make a decision. Your need is to discover a decision."

So many of the business management books talk about being "a decisive manager" and the dangers of procrastination until one gets the feeling their success lies in being a decision-making machine. My experience is almost the opposite. I find that the worst decisions are made when we feel like we must make a decision.

Why is this true? I think it is because a feeling of franticness is no basis for a sound decision. When we feel we must make a decision, we probably shouldn't.

The first question to ask ourselves in a moment of panic when we feel we must act, is what brought on this feeling of franticness? The place to look for the answer is within the feeling itself.

Ask yourself, How much fear is in this feeling? Where does this fear come from? What triggered it? Once we remove fear from a decision-making process, the chances of making a sound decision multiply.

Another thing Eric's words point up is that in discovering a decision, intuition is activated. To sense this for yourself, get quiet and say to yourself, "I must make a decision" and notice how your brain only responds. Now say, "I must discover a decision" and notice how your whole being settles into that thought.

What's going on here? You are activating your intuition. The two "kivker words" in these two statements are "make" and "discover." "Make" denotes effort and stress and "discover" stirs up excitement, energy and fun.

Speaking of fun, we need to work a little fun into our decision-making times. It may seem that seriousness is called for but seriousness constipates the mind, body and soul. When someone tells you, "Get serious!" always smile and keep smiling until the serious feeling fades.
I took a self-development course one time and they had what they called "the seriousness exercise." It convinced me to avoid seriousness except where lightheartedness would be considered rude, unpatriotic or inconsiderate.

You may say, "Oh, but how can you not be serious about sickness, divorce, death and some of the grim realities of life?" My response is that no reality is grim. It may be necessary and bring some unhappy feelings but look at it as necessary, not grim. Death is necessary or we would over-populate Earth. We'd have to give up sex and, my friends, that would be grim.

The worst decisions we will ever make will be when we feel grim about the situation we are trying to decide upon. If we feel we must make" (manufacture) a decision we will tend toward grimness. If we see that good decisions are discovered, we touch the situation with creativity and even a little playfulness.

I once taught a college course in creativity and reviewed the research to discover the most effective way to activate our creativity is playfulness. It sounds silly but it's only silly if we are too serious.

When we are discovering a decision, we feel ourselves reaching out with our whole being, rather than just our minds. We feel the tentacles of our creativity pulling in ideas from all directions. We tap into joyous energy.
While I hope some of these ideas will help you discover the decisions you wish to make, you will find that discovering a decision is easier to do than to describe. There are no automatic formulae for creativity. The fun lies in discovering what works for you.

Discover!

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Today's photo is the discovery of the beautiful light of a sun-dog over the Tennessee River.