When you make a decision, how committed are you to that decision? At the moment that you decide, how committed are you? I was inspired earlier today by some of the audio education I was listening to today. I’m a big believer in what is called “Net Time.” Net Time is No Extra Time. That’s any time you have that you are in the car, and you can’t have a book in your hands. Instead I can use the audio book version of Amazon, then I have it on in my car almost all the time rather than listening to just the radio. I make use of that time to fill my brain with good, positive material, things that ae going to help me grow and expand.

Today I heard this background or etymology for what “decide” means and where “decide” really comes from and that inspired me to bring up that question. Again, when you make a decision, how committed to that decision are you? At the end of the day if you are saying “I decide to” or “I have made a decision to,” you are saying that you’re cutting off everything else and going forward with that plan. You are truly committed to that decision.

The reason I say that is if you go back and you can look this up. Go and Google “decide” or “decision etymology” and you will see that the Latin meaning of the origin of decision, which is decidere, meaning “to cut off.”

Again, when you make a decision, when you decide to use that word, pun intended, you should be totally committed to what that decision is. Come hell or high water, making that your plan for the next number of days and seeing how that pans out. Be willing to take the success as well as the failure that comes with it. You learn your lessons in failure. You don’t learn your lessons in success. So be willing to fail, be willing to learn those lessons. Then you can adjust, make a new decision and commit again.

There’s an old story about a Spanish conquistador that was sent by the Queen of Spain to South America to conquer the Mayan empire. The boats are sitting in the bay off the coast of South America. He’s trying to figure out a way to motivate his soldiers to go out and conquer this empire. They were outnumbered by the Mayan tribes known for the fierceness with which they would fight. He wanted to be able to match their ferocity.

They get in the rowboats heading to shore, and as he gathers the troops around, he asks them all to turn around. When they turn around they see first one and then two and then three and then all the ships light up in a blaze. The captain had set every single ship on fire. As they turned back around he said, “Now you have no choice. If you want to go home, you have to move forward and defeat the enemy,” and as the legend goes, they went on defeat the enemy, beginning of the downfall of the Mayan empire.

I hope you see how powerful it can be to cut off your path of retreat. How it can force you to move forward, even when you don’t want to.

Now that you get the significance of what “decision” really means, what “decide” really means: to cut of all means of retreat and burn the boats in the harbor and go forward with your plan. What are you doing to decide?