“Standing in the middle of the road is very dangerous; you get knocked down by the traffic from both sides.” ~ Margaret Thatcher.

Making a choice to act can be difficult in different ways for women of different ages. If you’re in your forties like me, you might find The 10 Smartest Decisions a Woman Can Make After 40 interesting! However, the following ways to make a good decision apply to women of all ages…

How to Make a Good Decision for Women – Margaret Thatcher

Make decisions quickly, and keep a “decisions” journal. “Not only will you find that the decisions you make quickly are the better ones, but you’ll also find you’re much happier and more confident with those than you are with the decisions you make using laborious analysis,” writes Elaine St. James in Simplify Your Work Life: Ways to Change the Way You Work so You Have More Time to Live. She advises keeping a “decisions journal” for six months to determine how long it takes to make decisions and which ones were good decisions. Knowing how to make a good decisions quickly involves tracking your past decisions, both good and bad.

Margaret Thatcher is a woman who makes decisions quickly: “I usually make up my mind about a man in ten seconds,” she says, “and I very rarely change it.”

Trust your first instincts. St. James believes it’s important to trust your gut instincts. And, making a good decision for women involves eliminating clutter or “noise”, such as other people’s expectations want or what you’ve been programmed to do by your parents or teachers. “Often our days are so filled with unimportant minutiae that we easily get disconnected from our inner guidance,” writes St. James. Connecting to your inner voice takes practice, which is why St. James suggests the decisions journal when you’re trying to make a good decision. It will help you make the right decision quickly, and help you untangle the unimportant details.

Take an “Is this a good decision?” test. You can make a good decision by tuning in to your physical body. This test involves standing up straight, taking a cleansing breath of air, and either letting your arms rest by your sides or placing them against your solar plexus. Breathe in through the nose and out through your mouth. “It helps in the beginning to close your eyes,” writes St. James in Simplify Your Work Life. “Not only to eliminate visual distractions but also to help you get in touch with your center.” And, the more in touch you are with your inner self, the more you’ll get out of your life!

Most women’s bodies tilt forward when they experience a “yes” response to a decision. Their bodies tilt slightly backwards with a “no” response. To determine your own bodily response, imagine a “yes” and a “no” decision. Which way does your body lean?

Once you know how your body responds when you’re making decisions, you’re more in touch with you body’s energy field and you’ll be better able to make good decisions quickly. When you’re standing solidly and comfortably, ask yourself if a particular decision is truly in your best interest. Is it in your best interests to hire Jennifer, marry Bill or have a bacon double cheeseburger with super sized French fries for lunch?

“If the decision you’ve made is right for you, your body will start to fall forward ever so slightly; if the decision isn’t right, your body will start to fall backward every so slightly,” writes St. James. “The more you work with this, the better you’ll get.”

If you tend to make decisions based on a need to be liked, check out this final quotation from Margaret Thatcher: “If you just set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time, and you would achieve nothing. ”

If you have any questions or thoughts on making good decisions for women, please comment below…

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“The willingness to win OR lose moves us out of an adversarial relationship to life and into a powerful kind of openness,” writes Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen in Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories That Heal. “From such a position, we can make a greater commitment to life.”

Kitchen Table Wisdom is one of my all-time favorite books because it’s all about accepting — living and feeling – both the bitter and the sweet parts of life. There’s no doubt that life brings rejection, failure, heartache, disappointment, and pain…but it also brings success, healing, joy, fulfillment, love and laughter.

We — to be successful women – have to snuggle up to failure and increase our “bouncebackability” factor!

How to Fail and Bounce Back – Rachel Naomi Remen

Dr Remen is an oncologist who never married or had children. She struggled with Crohn’s Disease for most her life, and when she was in her 20s had surgery to remove most of her intestines. Remen knows failure and heartache…and she teaches people how to bounce back to live full, passionate lives.

“Joy seems to be part of an unconditional wish to live, not holding back because life may not meet our preferences and expectations,” writes Remen. “Joy seems to be a function of the willingness to accept the whole, and to show up to meet with whatever there is.”

To bounce back from failure,  let go of your attachment to a specific outcome. Work towards your goal of healing, achieving, or being — but be open to other paths! You’ll be surprised at how many roads to and forms of success exist. For instance, one of the magazines I often wrote for last year has suddenly collapsed…and poof! Just like that, one stream of income burbles down the drain. And, my agent recently reported that his top publishers for my See Jane Soar book have more or less all rejected my proposal. Sigh.

“Rather than the warrior who fights toward a specific outcome and therefore is haunted by the specter of failure and disappointment, it is the lover drunk with the opportunity to love despite the possibility of loss, the player for whom playing is more important that winning or losing,” writes Remen.

To bounce back from failure, trust your gut. For instance, at a party last week I was fascinated by a businesswoman. When she went to refresh her drink, I followed. Five minutes later, I discovered that her health company was looking for a freelance writer to interview doctors and write articles — and I’m a freelance writer who specializes in health articles! We exchanged cards. She’s not a publisher or the editor of a national magazine, but she’s a successful businesswoman – and together, we could achieve goals that we didn’t even know were possible.

To bounce back from failure, don’t fight with your life. Dance with it. To be a successful woman — and better yet, to enjoy your life — practice trusting your gut and following up on events or with people. Be curious about life and people, not stuck on the way things “should” be. Be open to taking new paths, not focused on what “should” happen.

Have you failed and bounced back? Do you let fear of failure (or success) paralyze you? In my writing career, I’ve received dozens of rejections from magazine editors, book publishers, and literary agents…and each rejection matters less.

Don’t be afraid to take a few knocks, my friends. They’ll make you stronger!

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“My husband wasn’t sweet to me,” said Thelma to the cop as she put him into the trunk of his own police cruiser. “And look how I turned out.”

Geena Davis played Thelma and Susan Sarandon was Louise – and Brad Pitt made one of his first appearances as the hottie hitchhiker/bad boy J.D. Click on the DVD cover to go to Thelma and Louise, and read on for ten life lessons from these successful women (which is up for debate!)…

10 Life Lessons From Thelma and Louise

1. You get what you settle for. “I still have to ask Darryl if I can go,” Thelma said. “He never lets me do a g-d damned thing. “You get what you settle for,” said Louise. Darryl treated Thelma like crap – but the thing is, she let him. She took everything he dished out without speaking up for herself. To be a successful woman, you need to stop settling!

2. Celebrate your differences. This life lesson from the Thelma and Louise movie involves not just tolerating your friends’ differences, but celebrating them. Thelma was a married stay-at-home housewife with a domineering, annoying husband. She wasn’t as mature or jaded as Louise, who worked as a waitress in a coffee shop and had a lot more life experience (including being raped earlier in her life).

3. Take care of yourself. Always, always watch your back, even when you’re having fun, even when you’re surrounded by people you trust. Thelma drank too much at a roadside bar and ended up in the parking lot with Harlan; Louise stopped him from raping her. “We’re just having a little fun,” Harlan said. “In the future, when a woman’s crying like that, she ain’t having any fun,” Louise said, voice trembling. “I should’ve f-ked her,” said Harlan. “Suck my —.” So Louise shot him. “You watch your mouth, buddy,” she whispered. Louise knew not only how to take care of herself, she knew how to take care of Thelma, too. And Harlan. That makes her a successful woman…I think!

4. Trust your gut. Louise did not want to pick up that hottie hitchhiker (Brad Pitt); her gut instinct told her to stay away. Thelma, who doesn’t seem to have much of a gut instinct to trust, wanted to give him a ride and wouldn’t stop talking about it. So, they ended up giving him a ride, and it was the second biggest mistake they made.

5. Pick your battles. “He is an asshole,” Thelma said about her husband. “Most of the time I just let it slide.” This life lesson from the Thelma and Louise movie isn’t about letting things slide; it’s about knowing where to draw the line. Setting your boundaries is about self-respect. People will treat you the way you let them – in fact, you teach people how to treat you by how you treat yourself and what you’ll take from others. Successful women set boundaries and stick to them.

6. Buckle up for the consequences. This life lesson from the Thelma and Louise movie runs through the whole movie: Whether you’re hooked up with a bad boy or the most decent husband in the world, be prepared for the natural consequences. Like what? The possibility that you’ll get hurt – whether he’s never around when you need him or he’s around too much. Or, he could steal all your money…like J.D. did to Thelma and Louise. Don’t let this stop you from taking risks to be successful, but just be prepared for what happens next. No whining about the bad stuff!

7. Take turns being strong. Louise was the strong woman throughout most of the movie. Until J.D. stole their money; then, Thelma became strong. Sex with J.D. gave her the self-confidence she needed to take control of her life. By the end – when Thelma was putting the crying cop into the trunk of his police cruiser – Louise wasn’t the only strong woman in the movie. The life lesson: be strong sometimes, and be weak sometimes. To be a successful woman, you need to find a healthy balance between giving and taking.

8. Take risks. Thelma, in her new role as the strong woman, robbed the store to get the money that they needed to get to Mexico to start their lives over again. I’m not advocating robbery – I’m saying that the life lesson from the Thelma and Louise movie is about trying new things and taking risks despite your fears.

9. Open up. Keeping secrets creates distance between you and your spouse, friends, and family. Louise waited until the end of the movie to tell Thelma that she was raped in Texas, in her earlier life. Throughout their friendship, Thelma never really knew Louise because she was afraid to open up.

10. Be comfortable with loose ends. The last life lesson from Thelma and Louise has to be about the ending — because we don’t know how it ends! And that’s exactly how life is: we don’t know for sure how it’s gonna end because it’s never really over…until it’s really over.

What’s your take on these life lessons from the Thelma and Louise movie? Actually, I’m more curious to know if you think they’re successful women! I think they died at the end of the movie…did they live life fully?

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