Do you ever feel guilty when you start something and not finish it?

How about feeling weak when you’re too chicken to even start something you want or need to do?

Or maybe feeling stupid when you refuse to give up, even when you know you don’t have a snowballs chance in hell of pulling it off?

All you have to do is apply sound decision making skills to the question “Do I quit or keep going?”

You’ll make better decisions. More good stuff will come to you. The bad stuff stays away.

This is particularly true as a leader when it comes to tough issues like employee motivation, employee performance management, and change management training.

The first step is the hardest. That’s committing to make better decisions about “sticking with it” versus “giving up.”

TIP #1: Ignore the little voice camped out in your ear. The words you hear come from all of your unconscious fears. This is not the basis for making sound decisions.

TIP # 2: Notice how tricky your beliefs can be. A belief that serves you well can also work against you. Believing you should “never give up” can lead you to success in on arena, and cause a costly inevitable failure in another. It doesn’t make sense to fight a losing battle to the bloody end just so you can say “I never give up.”

TIP #3: Become consciously aware of your self-talk (the conversations you have with yourself).

Let’s say there’s something you want to do. You start talking to yourself. “I’ve never done this before. I hear it’s really hard. It’d be fun, but . . . Well, I don’t have time anyway.”

Before you can say Kalamazoo and Timbuktu, you’ve talked yourself out of even trying!

Your self-talk could be different. “I’ve never done that before. Sounds like great fun. Everybody says its hard, but I wonder how difficult it really is. Maybe I should check into it enough to see what would be involved. If other people can do it, I probably can too.”

Self-talk can hold you back, or push you ahead. So be conscious of the conversations you have with yourself.

What kind of self-talk do you want to do?

Latch onto these three tips and you’ll make better decisions, be more successful, and happier.

Will you “stick with it” or “give up” when you’re wrestling with challenges like how to motivate employees, overhauling an employee motivation program, bumping up employee job satisfaction, and using performance management tools to get employee performance improvement?

Act now. Time’s a wasting.

Finally, listen up to this metaphor and see how it grabs you.

Two mice fell into a bucket of cream. One gave up and drowned. The other kept paddling around until he churned the cream into butter and walked out of the bucket. *

*From John Frasca, editor, GWT Changed the World for Me, Pyramid Publications, 1972, p. 251.