When Tony Robbins interviewed the top financial people in the world to write his book Unshakable, he found that the one characteristic that all of them shared was that they were willing to make decisions with only partial information available to them at the time of making the decision.
I have also found that the really hard decisions I have made in my life, where I did not know the outcome, but had to have faith that the outcome would be positive, have been the most fulfilling decisions in my life. One such decision was leaving my inheritance behind on the family farm to follow my “gut” and create a compelling future from scratch. At the time I had been back on the family farm for five and a half years and I was enjoying the farm life more than ever. My passion on the farm was my sheep! I had by this time built a really strong herd and had managed to turn it into a very profitable business. This was however a small part of what the farm consisted of. The farm is next to the orange river from where we irrigated mainly wheat and cotton. The farm also has a cotton mill which runs for 6 months in the year. So, it is a diverse farm which has been well managed since 1891 and which at that time and still to this day a very profitable business. But I found myself in “Canaan” with everything anyone could ever wish for, knowing in my heart that this was not the compelling future I had been called for! I was fighting to get through every day, instead of thriving. Then one day without warning I made a definite decision to leave the security behind and take a leap of faith into the unknown.
As you can imagine my wife’s reaction was utter unbelieve when I announced to her that we were moving and that we are moving at the end of that specific year. She went from surprise, to despair, to flat out “how will we survive?”! I sat her down and told her how I felt and that I did not want to settle for an inferior life to the one which I felt I had been called to. She listened and even though she understood, she still thought that I was crazy. And so did all of my friends and family etc. The feedback was what will you do? To be honest, at that time I had no idea. I did not even know where we would be moving, but nevertheless I announced it. I made a really tough decision, without the slightest of knowledge how it would end.
Looking back today, 2 and a half years and a covid world pandemic later, this was the best decision I have made in my life! None of the 2 and half years after the big move have been easy. It has been a struggle to build new businesses from the ground up. Banks have not been helpful in any way, because they want 2-year bank statements at least. So, we have had to create a new life with what we had. But never in my life previously have I been this keen to get out of bed in the morning and get the work done. I cannot wait to get to work, and I love what I do so much that I sometimes work late and get up very early. There has also been plenty of times where I did not know where tomorrow’s bread will come from, but time and again all our needs have been met and not only met but met tremendously well.
It was a tough decision and there were no guarantees and still today there are none, but it has absolutely been worth every minute and every second!
The easy decisions where you have all the information readily available can be made by anyone. It is the tough decisions that carry the greatest reward for those who are willing to take the jump. Yes, you could and will get it wrong as well and so have I, plenty of times. But what I have found is that when I get it wrong, I learn faster and build experience, which helps me make better decisions in the future.
