5 Frogs are sitting on a log. 4 decide to jump off. How many are left?
If your answer is 1, you’d be wrong.
The answer is 5 because there is a difference between deciding and doing.
Some would counter that the 4 frogs’ true intention was to stay on the log. Regardless of what they told themselves, they didn’t really decide to jump off. Their actions revealed their true choice.
What’s Really Going On?
In truth there are a whole lot of decisions and commitments all happening at the same time. The frogs may have decided to jump off, but somewhere in their mind they may also be committed to staying away from the (real or imagined) alligator in the pond.
This is a perfect analogy to what happens when we try to do something like re-invent ourself to make a bigger impact in the world. So, while we are committed to stepping into a larger version of ourself for the benefit of others, we may also be committed to stay invisible and safe, or to appear competent and smart, or to never make a mistake.
So, we end up with this battle within ourself, and we get stuck with different commitments vying for supremacy in our life.
This isn’t just imagined psychobabble. This is one of the primary hurdles pretty much everyone needs to overcome if they are to expand their influence in a meaningful way.
The simple truth is that one set of commitments needs to be weakened or the other set needs to be strengthened. Either way you go about it, it usually requires someone else’s support.
Intention
The joke about the 5 frogs seems to imply that deciding makes no difference, it is only action that counts. But that’s not true. Deciding does make a difference. If you decide to love someone no matter what, that’s a choice, and that choice looks a whole lot different than someone who loves when the right conditions are present.
Deciding always comes first. Without the decision, there would be no action. After your decision, your actions will reveal the truth or lie as to what you really decided.
The Big Picture
A whole lot of people just take life as it comes. These folks don’t have any goals, so it really doesn’t matter what they chose. Life becomes a series of mostly forced choices that present themselves one after the other: Chocolate or vanilla? The red cup or the blue cup? Steak and eggs, or the quiche? The job at the grocery store or the job at the factory? College or not college? The blue house downtown or the beige house in the suburbs? Take the job offer in Colorado or stay in my current job?
This kind of living feels a lot like a rat race. We are tossed back and forth by everything that comes up. We give up control of our life to other people and circumstances. Life is very much like a rudderless boat going any which way. We make decisions only because we have to. And as Zig Ziglar often has said, “if you don’t have a target, you’ll hit it every time.”
But it doesn’t have to be like this. You can take hold of the steering wheel of your life and set your life’s direction. To do this, you have to start with a clear decision. Great questions help with this kind of decision, questions like:
- What do you want your life to be about?
- What legacy do you want to leave?
- What would you like to be different in the world because of you?
And then, as the frog joke reveals, you have to act on the decision or it won’t matter.
