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How often do you pay attention to your personal internal decision-making process? Do you consider how a decision will affect you personally or just your businesses bottom line? Do you consider the personal sacrifices that you and your staff must make to take on a new project? Do you consider the opportunities lost in the pursuit of your decisions? (also known as “opportunity costs”)

If your business is your life then your business decisions will always come first without much consideration to your personal life, however, if you’ve got big personal goals beyond your businesses scope then your decisions probably won’t make much sense in the business world.

When I was in my early 20’s and 30’s all my decisions were about how to grow and expand my business. What new opportunities were on the horizon. What product or service should my business sell which made the most profit in the shortest amount of time. How my decisions would affect the future value of my business?  My core values were profit and growth and most of my decisions were made based on these metrics.

I was lucky enough to have a life partner that knew my plan and would allow me to travel where I needed to go and be where I needed to be to grow my business which ultimately ended up expanding into 30 cities in 11 countries. All was going according to plan until a beautiful thing happened; our baby was born. My business was no longer my most important baby. My values shifted dramatically. I decided London, England was not the right spot for us to raise a family. I wasn’t excited about travelling all over the world. I craved a reduced business life that would allow me to be around my baby boy.

Within a year we moved countries, I set up my head office in Amsterdam, a much smaller city and we bought a house in Bussum ( a small city/village just 3okms away). I went with my deeply felt emotions and gradually changed my business and travel responsibilities. It didn’t take much time to analyze my decisions because my feelings were so strong. I knew what made me happy and I allowed my feelings to dictate the direction of my life and ultimately my business.

Lucky for me, my wonderful wife craved new challenges and life adventures too. She’s all about trying new experiences so when we sat down to consider some viable options she was enthusiastic about moving to a new country. At the time, I had opportunities in Denmark, France, Japan and the Netherlands. We chose Holland and a new life and business adventure was born.

We spent twelve more years in the Netherlands and were blessed with a couple more kids, great new friends and five more businesses before we got the“Next Big Adventure” itch again and made the decision to move to Vancouver, Canada where the process is repeating itself once again…

Never let it be said that you didn’t live your life on your own terms and to it’s fullest extent! DJK

What about you? What decisions have you made with your heart instead of your head and are completely fulfilled that you did? Life, of course, gets shorter and shorter every year and it’s way too short not to live a life based on your dreams and lust for adventure.

I’m a firm believer that your feelings are always guiding you to make the best decisions for your overall life and true fulfilment.  Be sure to allow your feelings and emotions to have equal or more say over your logic and intellect when making your larger life and business decisions.