Category Archives: Emotional Intelligence

A reminder for you on your worst of bad days

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Few people are one hundred percent winners or one hundred percent losers.
It’s a matter of degree.  However, once a person is on the road to becoming a winner,
his or her chances are even greater for becoming more so.

Born to Win
Muriel James and Dorothy Jongeward

There are days when everyone else seems to have it sussed.  Other people have got there, so why haven’t I?  If you add timescales (“other people have got there before me”) you have the killer equation for feeling really bad about yourself.

“There” might be a state of mind (“other people are more calm, relaxed, joyful”).  “There” might be some kind of skill, aptitude or personal quality (“other people are more emotionally intelligent, diligent, organised”) or even the sum of all the skills, aptitudes and qualities to which one aspires (“other people are so much more capable than I am”).  “There” might be some position – personal or professional – to which one aspires (“other people find partners and settle down”;  “other people get to be Director by my age” etc.).

This is the language of “winners” and “losers”.  Psychology – and especially the branch of psychology called Transactional Analysis – has long since identified this kind of thinking with all its permutations.  We might think “I’m OK, you’re not OK” and act from this position.  We might think “you’re OK, I’m not OK” and act from this position.  We might make the ultimate generalisation (“everyone’s OK, except me”) to make it especially tough to get out of bed in the morning.  It’s not that we live the whole of our lives from one place – though we may do.  Rather, at a particular point in time, we may unconsciously choose a position.

As a coach, I work with people who are choosing to become winners, even if they were not winners before.  Even so – perhaps especially so – the person who is dedicated to his or her learning may have days when all the learning he or she has done seems to amount to nothing.  How come, with all this learning, I am still struggling with the same old things?  I was reminded of this recently as I held a space for a client on just one such day.

There is of course, an assumption that lurks beneath such thinking.  It is the assumption we brought to our journey of learning – that once we had done our learning, everything would be OK.  We did not anticipate that part of our learning would be to discover that we continue to have good days and bad days, we continue to have areas which sit outside our comfort zone, we continue to have experiences which stimulated grief in us, or sadness, or anger, as well as those which stimulate joy, gratitude, delight.

In my own journey, I have been especially grateful for Muriel James’ and Dorothy Jongeward’s wonderful book Born to Win.  They begin their book, which draws both on Transactional Analysis and Gestalt, by providing a vivid and compelling description of what it means to be a winner and what it means to be a loser. Winners are those who successfully make the transition to become independent and then interdependent adults, choosing authenticity over putting on a performance, maintaining pretence or manipulating others.

Perhaps the most essential point in their description is this:  being a winner is not a “once and for all” thing, but an ongoing journey.  As much as we may have our bad days, winners are able to be present to their emotions, to welcome them even, and still to recognise them is what is, in this moment.  Winners get to choose how they respond to their emotions and winners choose responses that reinforce their overarching choice to choose to win.

I could say so much more and still, I choose to leave you with this simple question:  what choices are you making on your worst of bad days?

PS  Just to let you know, as a member of Amazon Associates UK, I shall receive a referral fee for any books you buy using the links in this posting.

A tragic expression of an unmet need

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We’ve all met them.  The person whose behaviour in our monthly business update meeting is so bizarre that all the post-meeting talk is about them (“what was THAT about?”) rather than about the business.  The person everybody has labelled as “difficult” and whose office nobody visits – unless they HAVE to.  The person who seems so calm and on top of things one minute so that we are surprised when, suddenly, they respond to something we say in an entirely different tone.

Daniel Goleman, in his book Working With Emotional Intelligence, draws on the field of neuroscience to identify the “amygdala hijack”, the moment when something in our external environment stimulates emotion in us which is disproportionate to the event itself.  Sometimes we observe it in someone we know and are taken by surprise.  Sometimes it is the regularity with which we observe it in someone that prompts us to call them “difficult”.

What can be more challenging is to own that we, too, are stimulated in this way.  It is challenging because, as an observer of others, it is so clear that their response in a given moment is not rational – so clear that we judge.  And when we, too, fall prey to this ancient cocktail of stimulus and response, what then?  Are we to judge ourselves as harshly as we judge others?  No wonder we prefer to look away as if we are not witness, too, to our own behaviour.

I am reminded of this today when my work with a coaching client prompts me to offer an alternative perspective.  Marshall Rosenberg, author of Nonviolent Communication:  A Language for Life, describes such moments (and more besides) as “a tragic expression of an unmet need”.  Rosenberg’s phrase captures with compassion an assumption which is also at the core of neuro-linguistic programming (or NLP), the assumption that every behaviour has a positive intention.

At times, our attempts to meet our needs are highly ineffective.  This may be because we are overtaken by an amygdala hijack.  It may be because we lack the skills to take effective steps towards our desired outcomes.  It may be because we are so fearful of the feedback that is coming our way that we refuse it, so that we miss a valuable opportunity to adjust our course.

When we respond to ourselves and others with judgement, when we see such actions as irrational and inept, we are liable to tell ourselves that somehow something is wrong with the person, as if we are our behaviour.  A equals B.  Worse still, it is as if we are our behaviour at our moment of greatest ineptitude.

Rosenberg’s phrase and its first cousin assumption in NLP offer a more compassionate view.  We were trying.  We were trying to meet a need.  We did not meet it well in that moment.  Paradoxically, this more compassionate view does not excuse us so much as open up new possibilities.  For, if I can recognise that I have a need which is not yet met, I can try new ways to meet it.  And if I can see past the behaviours of others to embrace them as people who, like me, also have needs which they did not meet well in a given moment, I have an expanding range of possibilities in the way I respond so that both my needs and theirs might be met more fully.

Are you ready to let go of your judgements – of self, of others – to connect with the needs that lie beneath our most irrational and inept behaviours?

PS  Just to let you know, as a member of Amazon Associates UK, I shall receive a referral fee for any books you buy using the links in this posting.

To blame or not to blame

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This week I have been responding on my blog to a talk by Brene Brown at http://www.ted.com/.  Before I move on, I want to highlight and explore just one more comment from her talk:  when she suggests that the definition in the research of blame is “a way to discharge pain and discomfort”.

I confess I think of the early morning news team on Radio 4.  Do they ever report an unhappy event without asking “who’s to blame?”?  I often wonder who this serves and how.  Nor are the newscasters on Radio 4 alone.  Families blame their fellow family members for the every-day inconveniences they mete out on each other or they blame others outside the family for events – sometimes tragic events – that befall them.  Societies blame other societies (or even vague concepts, such as “terrorism”) for actions they do not enjoy.  People blame politicians.  Politicians blame each other.

I ponder the use of blame in the organisations I work with, for here, too, blame is used liberally.  Managers blame their staff for various actions and outcomes that do not meet their needs.  And because they hold the power of position they do this, at times, directly and openly and even as part of a formal process such as appraisal.  One team blames another (sales blames customer service who in turn blame accounts…).  Sometimes such blame is expressed openly and directly.  Oftentimes it is a low, ongoing grumble in the background of our interactions with each other.

Without question, our choice to blame has a positive intention – we do it for a reason.  If Brown and her colleagues in the world of scientific research are right, we do it to discharge pain and discomfort.  This raises a number of questions for me:  how effective is blame as a way to discharge pain and discomfort?  What are the side-effects?  And what are the alternatives?

Perhaps it would help to define blame in some way.  At the time of writing, Wikipedia offers the following definition of blame:  Blame is the act of censuring, holding responsible, making negative statements about an individual or group that their action or actions are socially or morally irresponsible, the opposite of praise. When someone is morally responsible for doing something wrong their action is blameworthy. By contrast, when someone is morally responsible for doing something right, we may say that his or her action is praiseworthy. There are other senses of praise and blame that are not ethically relevant. One may praise someone’s good dress sense, and blame the weather for a crop failure.

How effective is blame as a way of discharging pain and discomfort?  It seems to me that it must be effective to some degree, otherwise we would not do it.  To take one of the more extreme examples we can imagine, the relative or friend of someone who has been murdered may well find it easier to feel the anger that comes with blaming the person who has committed the murder than they do to be present to the intense feelings of grief connected with the loss of a loved one.  To give a more mundane – but nonetheless pertinent – example, the manager in the workplace may well find it easier to blame his (or her) staff for their failings than to recognise the shortcomings in the instructions he gave or to acknowledge his role in recruiting staff who lacked the necessary skills for the job.

What are the side-effects of blame?  It’s easy to see that blame has consequences that are undesirable.  If we choose to blame others, for example, we live with the ongoing feelings (of anger, resentment and so on) that go with blame.  And we do this whilst never being entirely free of the feelings we are seeking to hold at bay.  These include the grief of the mourner or the fears of the manager, and so on.  At the same time, there are consequences that go way beyond our immediate emotions.  Blame creates the culture we live in, for example, so that even when we are dealing with people who do not think in ways which produce blame we may fear blame from others because it is what we do ourselves.  In organisations, blame is often associated with a failure to get to the root cause of a problem or issue such that the problem continues.  Both the problem itself and the blame associated with it consume energy in ways which are unproductive.

So what are the alternatives?  I am going to offer two of many:

  • If the aim of blame is to discharge pain and discomfort, perhaps a key area to look for alternatives is in the area of handling our emotions.  Marshall Rosenberg, author of Nonviolent Communication:  A Language for Life, invites people to transform difficult emotions by understanding the needs that underpin them.  This means connecting with our unmet needs and the feelings that go with them.  This may well help us with the second of the options I offer here;
  • If our aim is to address a problem or issue, then it helps to focus on the outcomes we want and to explore what it would take to get to our desired outcomes.  Thinking about how we or others are contributing to a problem is no longer a matter of blame but rather becomes, in this scenario, a matter of identifying barriers to progress so that we can find ways to make progress towards our desired outcomes.

Whilst we may continue to consider who is responsible, both options involve letting go of attaching blame in order to get the best outcome.  I wonder, are you ready to let go of blame?

PS  Just to let you know, as a member of Amazon Associates UK, I shall receive a referral fee for any books you buy using links in this posting.  

Numbing painful emotions: is it really good for business?

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Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

Kahlil Gibran
The Prophet

On Monday, I wrote about Brene Brown’s masterful exploration of empathy and connection on TED (follow this link for a reminder).  Today I want to pick up on her assertion that, by numbing pain and other difficult emotions, we also numb – in equal measure – our capacity for joy.  Is this true?  And if so, what are the implications in the workplace?

Brown highlights in her talk that we numb our emotions as a strategy to protect ourselves from our feelings of vulnerability.  How do we do this?  Brown points to the experience of her fellow Americans, saying, “We are the most in debt, obese, addicted and medicated adult cohort in US history”.  And just to be clear, the picture that accompanied the word “addicted” highlighted alcohol rather than any other substance. Some might say, isn’t this a high price to pay for a bit of emotional pain relief?  Others might say – by their actions they do say – this is a price worth paying.  After all, isn’t society structured in a way that supports this?  But it doesn’t stop there.  As Brown points out, insofar as we numb our negative emotions (she cites vulnerability, grief, shame, disappointment) we also numb our capacity to experience the positive emotions (including joy, gratitude, happiness).  This is not a new discovery as Kahlil Gibran’s passage On Joy and Sorrow from The Prophet amply demonstrates.  Even so, it seems to be a discovery which is not widely known or understood.

I want to take a moment to touch in the implications for us in the workplace.  How many of us have experience of working in places where the expression of negative emotions (maybe positive emotions, too) is – implicitly or explicitly – discouraged?  It seems to me that our wokplaces are, increasingly, emotionally sanitised, so that oftentimes the response to emotion is to get someone out of the building (on “compassionate” grounds) as quickly as possible.  If we’re feeling angry because we didn’t get the promotion we hoped for we are left to find our way through or even expected to pull ourselves together.  If we are shocked by the way a customer has spoken to us on the phone we’re expected to meet our targets by picking up the next call.  If we feel nervous in our first meeting as a member of the Board we sure ain’t going to show it.

If Brown – and Gibran – are right, the corollary of this is that we lose touch with all positive emotions.  The satisfaction of recognising a piece of work well done is lost in the midst of our fear of criticism or even our own self-criticism.  The pay rise brings a temporary boost to our emotions before, quickly, becoming a new part of our every day reality.  The passions that motivated us to join our organisation become lost in the everyday experience of surpressing our emotions.

Last week I pointed to a posting by John Hepworth on DiscussHR about employee engagement.  He begins by saying:  According to Seijits and Crim (2006), a professor lecturing on leadership amused his audience by relating the following:  “A CEO was asked by a business journalist how many people work in his company.  ‘About half of them’, the CEO responded”.  It seems to me that Brown’s research points to a fundamental truth:  if organisations are serious about engaging the full commitment and contribution of their employees they need to get real about human emotion.  We all have emotions.  When we accept this as a fact of life we can begin to explore how these emotions serve us, to learn how we can recognise these emotions and even to learn how to manage and work with these emotions.  Only then can we begin to create the kind of culture and climate in which peole thrive.  This gives us a much greater chance of achieving what some call “employee engagement”.    

Insights into empathy: a call to authenticity

Emotional Intelligence

Once again, TED has come up trumps with a talk by Brene Brown called The Power of Vulnerability.

Brene Brown studies human connection – our ability to empathise, belong, love. The website says:  “In a poignant, funny talk at TEDxHouston, she shares a deep insight from her research, one that sent her on a personal quest to know herself as well as to understand humanity.  A talk to share”.

The connection reaches me via a colleague and I pass it on to a colleague.  He spots an assertion he doesn’t agree with (and nor do I) along the lines that People who don’t experience shame have no capacity for human empathy or connection.  I see shame as a function of self judgement as much as it is a function of empathy – strip away the self judgment and we still have the capacity to empathise.  When we couple our empathy with others with self-empathy we are able to connect with our intentions in doing something even whilst recognising that those same actions were unhelpful.  This is the road to sadness and to deep regret – but not to shame.

Putting aside this one assertion with which I do not agree, I applaud Brown for her exploration of the topic of empathy.  It’s not just that she is witty and sharply observant in what she says.  It’s not just that she exposes the fear and vulnerability that we all feel.  It is – for me at least – that she highlights that this is as true in the workplace as it is elsewhere.  At home women feel vulnerability initiating sexual contact with their husbands.  Men feel vulnerable initiating sexual contact with their wives.  At work, we feel vulnerable when we learn we have lost our job.  We feel vulnerable telling others they have lost their job.  This vulnerability is simply part of the human condition.

Brown highlights those things we do that stand in the way of empathy and connection – with ourselves, with others.  She also offers some alternative ways of being in the world.  Keep reading if you want to share with me some of my own observations about what Brown has to say.  And whether or not you take time to keep reading, you might want to take time watch Brown’s talk and to hear what she has to say.

Choosing words that heal

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Sarah Palin has been sharply criticised in recent days for her insensitivity, even as she tries to look presidential.  Peter Stanford, writing in the Belfast Telegraph, highlights how Palin placed a rifle target over Arizona during the 2010 election to designate that Gabrielle Giffords was a politician she wanted out of the way, leading to accusations that she is personally responsible for Gifford’s shooting last week by Jared Loughner.  Whilst we all wonder what the outcome will be for Gifford and for others who were wounded, six people have already died.

Stanford’s article highlights the power of words, focussing in particular on Palin’s use of the phrase “blood libel” which he examines in depth, laying out the history of its use and its association with acts of terrible violence perpetrated on Jewish people throughout the ages.  Sarah Palin is playing with fire, he says. She has been one of the most effective practitioners of the use of words-as-weapons, damning Barack Obama’s healthcare reforms, for instance, as “death laws”. But just as such poisonous oratory can get the crowds cheering, it can also lay you low. Perhaps the real choice that faces Palin now is whether she wants to join the ranks of politicians whose gaffes and casual ignorance of history make them a joke, or step up into the responsible mainstream.

Obama, without question an orator of great skill, eschews tit-for-tat in favour of a different kind of discourse.  Speaking at a memorial service for the victims of the shooting in Tucson, Arizona, Obama seems to be addressing politicians of all persuasions when he says, But at a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized – at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do – it’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.

Saying yes to examining the reasons for the shooting so that steps can be taken to reduce the likelihood of similar events in future, Obama nonetheless cautions, But what we can’t do is use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on one another. As we discuss these issues, let each of us do so with a good dose of humility. Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let us use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy, and remind ourselves of all the ways our hopes and dreams are bound together.

The openly Christian rhetoric of American politicians sits uncomfortably at times amongst the British, so that some may choose to ignore his words (which you can read in full by following this link).  Yet more people may wonder what this has to do with us.  I see in Obama’s speech an act of leadership of the highest order, for he addresses not only the sense of grief and loss experienced by those affected by this tragedy, not only the political issues of the day, but also the manner in which we choose to live our lives.  His is a rare and welcome choice:  to rise above the opportunity to gain political capital in order to invite men and women on every side of the debate to act in ways which honour the dead and give hope for the future.

As I close, I feel a deep sense of gratitude for a man who is consistent in choosing the language of empathy and compassion over the language of conflict and discord.  For his choice reminds us that we, too, get to choose.  We may not get to choose the events of our lives or the behaviours of those we deal with and still, we get to choose whether to speak to the best of who we are or to the worst.  I thank Obama for choosing words that heal.

How to make the tougher decisions you face

Developing as a leader, Emotional Intelligence, ,

What do you do when you face a decision that is finely balanced and with no easy answer?  This is the question my coaching client brought to our session recently.  She had been weighing the pros and cons of two very clear options and had yet to come to a decision.

Checking in with her gut instincts she already had an answer.  I invited her to rehearse the reasons for her choice as a way of grounding her decision.  She did and they seemed clear and compelling.  It was interesting, then, to hear a “six out of ten” when I asked her:  given all the reasons you outlined, what mark out of ten would you give to reflect your level of conviction that this is the right decision?  It was clear that something more was needed.

I invited her to try each option on for size.  She tried on the first option, noticing all the likely outcomes from this decision in the near-, medium- and longer-term, together with the implications for her – the work involved in following through with her decision.  This gave her new insights into the benefits and limitations of this option.  Then she tried on her second option, going through the same process.

One issue came up when she thought through her second option:  the amount of time she thought it would take in the short term to follow through with this option.  We discussed the resources she could call on so that the weight of this short-term follow-through could be spread out a little, leaving her free to focus on another – key – area of her job.  Once she had identified these new possibilities, this second option looked much more attractive in the longer term.

As a result of this process her decision – which was not the decision to which her gut instinct had initially led her – was one she could sign up to with a full conviction.  What’s more, she was clear that her next steps needed to include making a plan and gaining support in order to access the resources she needed for her short-term follow-through.

My satisfaction came from knowing that my client not only had a decision she could approach with conviction in what was, without question, a difficult situation:  she also had a process she could return to when making decisions in the future.

I wonder, what’s your process for making the tougher decisions you face?

The dance of intimacy

Emotional Intelligence
…separateness does not mean emotional distance, which is simply one way of managing anxiety or emotional intensity.  Rather, separateness refers to the preservation of the “I” within the “we” – the ability to acknowledge and respect differences and to achieve authenticity within the context of connectedness.
Harriet Goldhor Lerner, PhD
The challenge of relationship is one that affects men and woman at work and in the home.  And as Christmas approaches (yes, less than a month now until Christmas) the tensions that already exist amongst family members begin to come more sharply into view.  It’s one thing to weather the low-level unease between you and your partner when you are both out to work five days a week and another thing altogether to spend a fortnight together at Christmas.  And that’s before mentioning parents, siblings, in-laws…
Relationship is the ultimate challenge to our authenticity for the reason Lerner highlights in this quote.  It is so easy to maintain an uneasy rapport in intimate relationships by sacrificing a measure of authenticity.  As a temporary strategy you might say it works.  Over time, it can lead us to have relationships with our supposedly nearest and dearest which are like fossils – a brittle and unchanging representation of something that was and now is no longer.  Unlike true fossils, the needs that are not met in such relationships are always hovering beneath the surface and waiting for a moment to express themselves.
The strain of such relationships extends beyond the relationships themselves.  Many people embrace the idea that the unresolved emotional issues in our lives are embodied over time in our general health and well-being and may ultimately lead to a variety of physical illnesses.  It can seem that we are left with a poor handful of alternatives if we are to maintain our good mental, emotional, physical and even spiritual health whilst also maintaining our relationships.  Staying in rapport with ourselves whilst also staying in rapport with others is a challenging business.
In her book, Lerner offers clarity and simplicity whilst maintaining depth.  She identifies the central role that anxiety plays in relationships and some of the common strategies people use to respond to anxiety – strategies which do not work.  She also offers a small number of core aspects of relationships to which we need to respond, including what she calls “triangles” (the way we engage with third parties as an outlet to issues we won’t face in a relationship) and the issue of polarity, especially in the extent to which we function in a relationship, becoming the capable or incapable member of a relationship between opposites.
Lerner also offers some clear messages for those of us who want to make changes in our relationships.  She highlights self-focus as the foundation stone of intimacy.  By this, she does not mean a blind and selfish urge to meet our own needs no matter what.  Rather, she refers to the courageous acts of owning our own needs and naming them in a relationship rather than seeing the other person in the relationship as the source of all problems.  And she offers both practical steps and many case studies to illustrate the points she makes.
If there’s one sadness I have about this book it is that it’s directed at women. It deserves to be read by men and women alike – perhaps in time for Christmas.
PS  Just to let you know, as a member of Amazon Associates UK, I shall receive a referral fee for any books you buy using the links in this posting.



 

Working with a sense of flow

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Establish a place of work where engineers can feel the joy of technological innovation, be aware of their mission to society and work to their heart’s content.
Masaru Ibuka
First “purposes of incorporation” of Sony
There’s a name I have yet to master, so it’s a cut and paste rendition for me:  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has made it his mission to understand what makes people happy, recognising that research – again and again – shows that, beyond a certain level, money isn’t where it’s at.
Csikszentmihalyi’s classic text, Flow:  The Psychology of Happiness, has made it from my Amazon wishlist to my study and still has yet to be read.  So I was curious to receive a link to a speech by Csikszentmihalyi on the wonderful www.TED.com which is also available on YouTube – just follow this link to hear him talk for just short of twenty minutes about his life’s work.

What questions does it raise?  I wonder, how many of us achieve this state of flow and how often?  What would our life be like if this were a regular part of our experience?  And what would our experience of work be like if we made it our mission to pursue flow as a primary goal in our careers?  (Or if, as leaders, we made it a primary goal of our leadership to create a work environment in which those we lead experience the state of flow in their work?)

Masaru Ibuka seems to have recognised the possibilities for our lives in the workplace in his first “purposes of incorporation” for Sony.  As I write I recognise that it’s easy to look to the organisations we work for to facilitate our own sense of flow.  I wonder, are you ready to be responsible for this aspect of your life?

PS  Just to let you know, as a member of Amazon Associates UK, I shall receive a referral fee for any books you buy using the links in this posting.

Making an empowered choice

Emotional Intelligence

“Should you not report sexual harrassment at work?  What happenes to the women who report it?”  This question comes up on the Human Resources UK group on LinkedIn and I notice it draws my attention.  I notice the implicit assumption that being harrassed is a women-only experience.  I also ponder the difference between coming to such an experience as a victim and coming to it as someone who is empowered to make choices.  This is my response on the forum:

From the point of view of the person who is viewing the behaviour of another as harrassment, two key questions (in my view) are this: is he or she ready to open up a conversation with uncertain outcomes? And what is the cost of not doing so?

We face the same dilemma in every area of our lives. For example, there was a time following the death of my father when I became aware that one friend was unhappy because I wasn’t choosing to spend as much time with her as I had been used to and I was making a different decision with another friend. She shared her feelings with me and I invested time in listening. I also asked her to hear what was going on for me and, effectively, she said no. For me, this was a process of discovery, finding out about the limits of our friendship and, ultimately, led me to let go of that friendship. I was ready for that. Some others might not have been.

Coming back to sexual harrassment at work, anyone who chooses to open up a dialogue about their experiences is choosing to find out more about the organisation they work for as well as about the person whose behaviour he or she is not enjoying. It’s likely that this won’t always be pretty. At the same time, this does open up further choices. Of course the question is there to be asked: what’s the learning for me in this situation? And there is also the question: given what I have experienced as a result of raising an allegation of sexual harrassment, do I want to stay with this organisation or move on?

Perhaps there’s a question here about whether we come to the dialogue as a “victim” or as an empowered person who is ready to find out more and use new insights to make decisions.

Of course, there is so much more that could be said.  This was my starter for ten.