COMPETENCE
miracle of life, who survived the
trauma of selective abortion and
was now in the world to express
her uniqueness. Tabi and I named
her Amani, which means, cherished
wishes in Arabic. She is truly our
bundle of cherished wishes.
As she grew up she was hitting the
higher end averages on the growth
charts for European kids. Seemed
like she had the power of 3. This
little angel has now grown into a
beautiful, adorable and responsible
young lady. Recently she completed
her IB with a score of 39 and is
now studying at ‘Cass business
school’ in London. Already she has
given us so much priceless love
and innumerable proud moments
that we prostrate humbly in front
of God, in gratitude for giving us
Amani, our cherished wishes.
Reliving the past dilemma, a
thought came to my mind that it
is easy to look back at decisions in
hindsight. However, how difficult
they seem when we are facing
them. The reason is that our mind
gets into a thinking overdrive and
creates a tsunami of emotions
that makes it difficult to focus.
In my view the key to decision
making is in keeping our mind
calm and emotions under control,
by developing healthy rituals like
emotional hygiene (ability to take
care of emotions as you take care
of physical wellbeing), meditation,
healthy nutrition, self awareness,
laughter, spending time with friends
and family, good rest and exercises.
Life is all about decisions, decisions
and decisions,… Our greatest gift is
the power to make decisions and it
is second only to the gift of life itself.
As leaders we have to make decisions
all the time. Science tells us that we
make 20,000 decisions in a day. Some
are rudimentary like, what to post
on social media? What to eat? Which
restaurant to go? Then there are more
critical decisions like, hiring, firing,
opening a new company or closing a
manufacturing facility. Decisions that
have a far reaching impact on the lives
of others.
The challenge in making decisions
come from the following traps:
1. Emotions. This is a big trap. When
decisions are made in anger, wrong
decisions are made confidently and the
leaders defend their wrong decisions
by investing good money after bad.
However, when there is fear, it leads
to procrastination. The way out is for
leaders to practice emotional hygiene.
Develop rituals that enable them to
keep the mind calm most of the time.
2. Procrastination. Indecision is a
decision that is made on your behalf by
time. It is common to see many leaders
stuck into the trap of analysis paralysis,
committee formations and perpetual
December 2018 | 45