Feels like a loss…

I have a couple clients that are really good at starting the work to build their CORE and OPUS, they’re just not good at finishing.  We talk about this all the time.  They know they would benefit from finishing but they can’t seem to do it.  One of them has even identified that he’s kinda afraid to finish stuff and he can’t tell me why.  He wants to understand this and get to the root because he and I are both certain that this isn’t isolated.  This is one of his melody lines in work and life. And, it’s holding him back.

Great to start, good intentions to make sizeable progress, and a failure to finish.

Lets go back and, together, find our way forward. The etyomology of the English word “decide” has a kinda funny bed-fellow.  The Latin word “caedere” is where the word decide got its start.  It means to “cut off” or “to kill.” Yikes. No wonder…

Caedere is also the etyomological root for the English word “homicide.”  When we make a decision we are “killing” our options. We are cutting off the chance to remain open, so to speak. We are choosing to decide and this feels like a loss. Remember, we are hard wired for “loss aversion” more than we are for anything. This goes way, way back and isn’t going away, ever.

Dan Ariely, author of one of my favorite books titled, Predictably Irrational, drives this home with clarity. “Closing a door on an option is experienced as a loss, and people are willing to pay a price to avoid the emotion of a loss.”

This is why so few finish their OPUS and PoP it with discipline. Their untrained brain is tricking them into thinking that, by not finishing, they are keeping their options open. The truth is something else. By NOT deciding we are choosing to remain where we are. We are marrying the status quo. We are closing off the chance for growth because we are afraid to move. This “no decision” is actually a deathnail that leads to the worst kinda death…

A slow one.

You decide. Your decisions have consequences. The cool thing is that the more you make them, the easier they get to make.

Finish, my friend. The truth is, it aint gonna kill you…