8 Steps to Making the Right Life Decisions at the Right Times

Crunch Time
by Ken Lindner

The career coach to America's biggest media names reveals powerful, motivating, and highly-effective Strategies for achieving your goals by making the very most out of every decision-making opportunity.

For more than a decade, Ken Lindner has built a reputation as one of broadcast journalism's most successful talent agents and career counselors. He's learned that even everyday decisions have the power to become crucial turning points in life, and in Crunch Time he reveals the eight foolproof Steps to making constructive and self-enhancing decisions and the specific Strategies to make it happen. What separates those individuals who achieve their goals and realize their dreams from those who don't, Ken explains, is the process by which the achievers reach their decisions.

With fascinating case studies, Lindner illustrates how to tap into our most heartfelt values and important goals, so that we will inevitably be led to make positive, constructive, and self- enhancing decisions. Infused with Ken's trademark enthusiasm and ability to inspire, this is the ultimate beacon for every defining moment, in business and in life.

I have devoted my professional and personal lives to enabling people to fulfill their potential, by giving them the tools to make wise, constructive, and self-enhancing decisions. It gives me incredible satisfaction to see the individuals with whom I've worked and/or coached enhance themselves and others by thinking and acting in constructive ways, so that they not only achieve their most cherished goals, but also develop valid, positive self-esteem in the process. And, as you will glean from what follows, the process or manner in which you reach your decisions is vitally important to your psychological and emotional well-being.

There is no question that one of my good fortunes is that I have been able to identify talented individuals, early in their careers, and secure their representation. However, I have observed over and over again that talent alone is merely unrealized potential. Attaining sustained success in any endeavor takes more than just talent, ability, or heartfelt dreams - it requires rock-solid decision-making skills, based upon constructive and self-enhancing decision-making strategies.

I was blessed, as a late-blooming child, to have loving parents - especially a mother - who believed in me, effectively counseled me, and never made me feel "less than." As a result of this support, my extensive athletic endeavors, and the creation and implementation of my Crunch Time Decision-Making Strategies, I have grown to be much happier and have achieved many of my goals and dreams. Due in large part to this good feeling and success, my life mission is to believe in and counsel others, so that they can achieve their most precious goals and develop legitimate high self-esteem.

In the film Dead Poets Society, prep-school teacher John Keating, portrayed by Robin Williams, shares the following thought about life with his students:

The powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. What will that verse be? What you are about to read in Crunch Time is the heart and soul of my life's work and verse. I believe that if you take the time to reflect upon and absorb the material herein, it can and will make a very positive difference in how you write the future verses of your life's play.

Decisions and Decision-Making: An Overview

The keys to attaining your goals, fulfilling your dreams, and achieving inner happiness are:

Making Constructive and Enhancing Decisions and
Thereafter Acting Consistently with These Decisions
for as Long as They Remain Constructive and Enhancing

Every day, we're faced with all sorts of issues, choices, and decisions that affect our lives to varying degrees. Some decisions will change our lives forever. In some cases, just a few critical decisions can make a world of difference in a person's life. Other decisions are less profound, but still have an important impact on whether we eventually achieve our large and small goals. The act of making constructive decisions and doing positive things for ourselves makes us feel good about ourselves. This good feeling, in turn, propels and catalyzes us to do more and more enhancing things for ourselves. Conversely, destructive and self-sabotaging decision-making and behavior diminish the quality of our lives and - in our Heart-of-Hearts - make us feel bad about ourselves. Therefore, it behooves you to strive to rid yourself of unhealthy decision-making strategies and to develop, modify, and keep the enhancing ones, in order to become the wisest decision-maker you can be and thereby fulfill your positive potential.

You are the result of your decisions! The state of your life and your inner happiness, in large part, are reflections of your decisions. Your decisions are your very precious opportunities - each and every one of them - to either raise the quality of your life and the lives of those around you, or to lower the quality. They are your wonderful chances - your everyday gifts - all there for the taking, to seize your "gold-ring" (forget the brass stuff!) dreams.

There is no question in my mind that what separates those individuals who achieve their goals and realize their most cherished dreams from those who don't is the process by which the achievers reach their decisions.

During my twenty years as a career counselor and choreographer, I've worked with scores of individuals who have learned to think through and deal with things constructively. Not surprisingly, a great majority of them have achieved the highest pinnacles of success. Interestingly, a number of these successful people have achieved even more than their natural talent might indicate that they could. (I am one of them.) Their constructive mind-sets and strategies enabled and empowered them to become super- or overachievers. For instance, I would argue that tennis great Chris Evert didn't possess some of the physical strength or natural athletic gifts that some of her competitors enjoyed. She didn't have anything resembling a powerful serve and she rarely came to the net to volley, yet she dominated women's tennis for years. Why? Because she was so mentally and emotionally strong and constructive. On the other hand, I know far too many people who have undermined themselves through their destructive decision-making and thought processes. As a result, time after time, they experience crushing defeats, because without constructive and effective decision-making skills and strategies, even the most brilliant talent can be wasted. Not only do these often supremely gifted individuals never come close to fulfilling their potential, and therefore fail to taste the sweet, high-self-esteem fruits of well-made decisions, but in many instances, they also destroy significant portions of their own lives and the lives of those around them.

Let's take a moment to compare the following words:

Enhancing vs. Sabotaging
Fulfilled vs. Empty
Constructive vs. Destructive
Positive vs. Negative
Healthy vs. Toxic
Proactive vs. Victim
Successful vs. Failure

How do you want to describe yourself, your decisions, and your decision-making processes?

I'm sure that if you're reading this book, you'd probably choose the left-hand column. Yet as sure as death follows life, we all engage in some amount of diminishing, destructive, and toxic decision-making.

No one in this world is perfect. The key is to become the very best decision-maker you can. My mom once shared the following thought with me: "I'd rather strive for perfection and fall short, then strive for mediocrity and attain it." Smart person, my mom!

Let's strive to be the best we can be. Constructive decision-making can be simple. You just have to want to learn, want to grow, and want to lift the quality of your life.

Copyright © 2005 Ken Lindner

About the Author

Ken Lindner has represented hundreds of the country's most prominent anchors and reporters, including Matt Lauer, Elizabeth Vargas, Lester Holt, and Paula Zahn. A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard, he worked as an attorney for the William Morris Agency before founding Ken Lindner & Associates.