Step Four: YOUR 10-10-10
Elevate your life choices so regret is a thing of the past.
Because we don’t have simple strategies for making big life choices, we buy cars we regret buying, we buy houses we regret buying, and on and on.
We end up regretting so many of our big life choices. Happiness requires choices that move you in the direction of all you are.
This step offers a decision-making process that honors your values so that, with each choice you make, you are moving forward in the world aligned with the deepest and most authentic parts of who you are instead of moving away from your truth.
This Step helps you understand how to use your values to make regret-free life choices that make you happy.
There are 3 sections to this Guide:
Why 10-10-10?
How to use 10-10-10
Benefits of using 10-10-10
There is one tool for this step: the 10-10-10 Decision-making Worksheet.
Additional guidance for making decisions aligned with your values is offered in the video that accompanies this step.
Let’s get started!
Table of Contents
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Why 10-10-10
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How to Use 10-10-10
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Benefits of using 10-10-10
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10-10-10 Decision-Making Worksheet
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Your 10-10-10 Video
1. Why 10-10-10?
One of the challenges of the human condition is to make decisions that we don’t regret.
Unfortunately, most of us don’t know how to make major life decisions, much less align our decisions with our values. That might stem from the fact that our parents didn’t teach us decision-making processes as children. I know mine didn’t.
There is no judgment in that. I am not angry at my parents ; it’s just an observation. I feel pretty confident my grandparents didn’t teach my parents how to make decisions either.
That leaves us agonizing over choices before we make them, while we try to make them, and after we make them.
Woulda, Coulda, Shouldas and regrets – all time wasted instead of time spent enjoying the fruits of our choices.
That used to be me. That all stopped when I discovered 10-10-10.
The Step 4 Tool is the 10-10-10 Decision-Making Worksheet.
I created the worksheet after I read Suzy Welch’s book 10-10-10: A Fast and Powerful Way to Get unstuck in Love, at Work, and at Home.
Welch developed a process for making authentic life decisions based on your values. Her process invites you to look at your decision in 10 minutes, 10 months, and 10 years. There is a purpose for the timeline and I will circle back to that in a moment.
Prior to discovering 10-10-10, I discussed strategy and decisions based on the short-term, mid-term, and long-term. People’s eyes glazed over. There was nothing “sexy” about evaluating decisions in those time frames. But Welch changed that with 10-10-10.
On her book cover, as an endorsement, Glamour magazine called 10-10-10:
“The best decision-making tool ever.”
I agree. And so do my coaching clients.
Many times, after explaining how to use 10-10-10 in an individual or group coaching session, people will throw me an incredulous look and say, “Why didn’t somebody tell me about this when I was younger?” And I reply, “I know, right?”
It would have made life so much easier.
Welch writes in her book that by utilizing the 10-10-10 process,
“life is renewed; my decisions deliberate, purposeful, and confident.”
I want everyone’s decisions to be deliberate, purposeful and confident. It leads to a happier life!
Welch didn’t offer a tool in her book that made her 10-10-10 idea come to life so I created the 10-10-10 Decision-making Worksheet. I’ll explain how to use the worksheet in a moment but first, let’s peek at the power of 10-10-10.
Why use a formulaic process like 10-10-10 for making decisions?
Welch offered that we are in a time when the world moves at warp speed and decisions can feel relentlessly complex. 10-10-10 can help you forge an intentional life, choice by choice, by cutting through the complexity.
She also observed that a formulaic process like 10-10-10 “can make you far less likely to find yourself outside looking in at your life, in shock, dismay, or the kind of regret that rusts in you forever.”
As mentioned previously, knowing your values and living aligned with them out in the world reduces those woulda, coulda, shouldas and regrets.
Why use the 10-10-10 Decision-making Worksheet?
Not only does 10-10-10 hush the mind so we can focus on what is important, its design helps counter some of the inherent biases built into the brain that can sabotage decision-making.
First, using 10-10-10 allows you to see the big picture instead of only focusing on selective information. The process forces you to expand the visual field of your choice. It requires you to consider all of your values in the decision-making process and what impact they have on the choice.
Second, the 10-10-10 process requires you to consider the time element. Often, you only see a decision’s impact in this moment. By considering the short-term in 10 minutes, the mid-term in 10 months, and the long-term in 10 years, the impact a decision may have on you over time is visible. Thus, our need for immediate gratification is counteracted and doesn’t sabotage the choice.
With this background on 10-10-10, let’s practice using it.
2. How to Use 10-10-10
The 10-10-10 Decision-Making Worksheet helps you apply your five values to your choices by inviting you to examine the implications of your decision in 10 minutes, 10 months and 10 years in light of those values you hold dear.
3. Benefits of Using 10-10-10
This method of decision-making allows you to make choices aligned with your authentic self. It also allows you to make decisions quickly.
Welch’s explanation of the impact of the process says it best:
“Much to my surprise, I found that the process invariably led me to faster, cleaner, and sounder decisions. And as an unexpected bonus, it also gives me a way to explain myself to all the relevant “constituents” – my kids or parents or boss – with clarity and confidence. “Let me tell you how I came to that decision, “ I could finally say, and go from there.”
I agree with her and I have an example.
A few years ago, my family was invited to the 75th birthday of my aunt who lives near Richmond, Virginia, a little more than a three-hour drive from my home.
There was a big tennis tournament that same weekend in North Carolina that my son, Warren, wanted to play in.
Add to the mix my preference for spending the weekend on the couch reading books, and we now have three competing events.
It became evident that I was in the middle of a values clash:
I wanted to attend my aunt’s birthday party because family is important to me.
I wanted to take Warren to the tennis tournament because family is important to me.
I also wanted to rest on the couch and read because freedom and wisdom are important to me.
First, this decision looked difficult.
I was struggling with making the right choice.
When I applied 10-10-10 to the dilemma, examined the data points, and then asked,
“Now that I’ve thought about your options and their consequences, which decision aligns with my values and will make me happy?”
the choice became quite clear.
I needed to attend my aunt’s birthday party.
Over the course of the next 10 years, I would be more at peace knowing I celebrated my aunt’s birthday with family and had those memories to savor than if I spent the weekend on the couch or went to a tennis tournament.
The 10-10-10 process allowed me to see how my choice would play out across time and to make a decision consistent with what is most important to me.
When I broke the news to Warren that he was not going to play in the tennis tournament, I was able to do exactly what Welch said.
I was able, with clarity and confidence, to look at Warren and state, “Son, I have used 10-10-10 for this decision and I am going to honor the value of family. We are going to Richmond to celebrate my aunt’s birthday.” Warren looked at me and said, “Okay.”
Wait a second.
That was too easy.
And that is the point.
10-10-10 considers and honors all of the important decision points based on what you care most deeply about.
And I don’t always honor the happiest choice! Sometimes, I knowingly do things that don’t align with my values and it is a conscious choice.
Sometimes girls just want to have fun… that may mean stepping outside of my values.
Doing so is an informed choice, however.
For me, when I consciously and knowingly say I am making a choice that doesn’t align with my top five values and here is why I am doing so I won’t experience the woulda, coulda should and regrets because it is an informed choice.
This statement is just as important as acknowledging the choice that is aligned with your top five values.
You knowingly made the choice to step outside what you deeply care about.
Welch said that “10-10-10 becomes a powerful strategy to construct an authentic life, in sync with our true priorities, dreams, hopes, and beliefs.”
Exactly. It is a magnificent way for you to lean into your values and make decisions aligned with the deepest parts of who you are.
You grow into your values the more you make choices consistent with them.
Practice using 10-10-10 to make some smaller decisions that are in front of you now – try on the process to see how it works before you have a big decision you have to make.
By doing so, you will have a better feel for how the process works and the way it integrates with who you are and what you do.
The purpose of 10-10-10 is to design a life that is authentically yours so there are no regrets that rust inside of you for years. Having no regrets makes you a happier person!
It is okay to make a choice not aligned with your top five values as long as you do that consciously and knowingly.