“Each decision we make is an important decision.” Stephen R Covey.

Why is that? It’s because what happens immediately after that decision is made will impact not just the activity that results, but the relationships involved. Make a bad decision that affects someone else, and they will undoubtedly judge you, and not your decision, when laying blame on the way they feel – and when deciding what they might do about that feeling. A bad decision leads to another bad decision, and that later one (and the ones that follow) are wholly outside your Circle of Influence.

Our decisions flow from our paradigms – how we see a problem in the moment influences how we make our decisions.

For that reason it is important that our paradigms are as accurate as they can be, as objective as we can make them, and as principled and aligned with our personal values and mission statement as possible. Decisions made in keeping with principles and our (principle-based) mission statements are made with meaningfully-thought-through foundation, in that we effectively made the decision – in fact, any decision – when we established the way we wish to live and behave. When we drafted and committed to our personal mission statement(s) we had already influenced future decisions, because the root of those fruits had been planted in our very souls.

Another reason to write one, dear reader.