90 day period for decision-making Archives

Have you ever worked for someone who is more of a friend than a boss? Well, my boss is that person for me. She’s incredibly wise and open. She’s a strong, intelligent woman but at the same time she’s spiritual and has an enormous amount of self-awareness. In a few short months, she’s left quite an impression on me. Since she travels a lot, I haven’t spent a lot of face to face time with her – our communication runs the gamut of email, telephone, and instant messenger. However, when she is in the office, we talk about a lot of different “life” things. I can tell that she loves sharing the knowledge gained from years of personal “life” experiences. In fact, she wants me to start a young women’s professional group in the Miami area. She even volunteered to be a sponsor! We’ll see…

Anyway, we were talking about bad relationships the other day, and she shared a story about one of her friends from years ago. This friend would go through a rollercoaster of emotion every other day over the guy she was dating – one day she was happy, one day she was sad, one day she was upset. Basically, she didn’t know how she felt and what to do about it.

My boss, being the honest person that she is, didn’t tell her friend that it would be ok, nor did she tell her to breakup with the guy. Instead, she told her to create a 90-day calendar (because important decisions can only be made over an extended period of time). And going forward, for every morning where she felt truly happy to be in the relationship, she was to mark that day with a huge red circle. And for every morning where she felt any other conflicting emotion, she was to mark the day with a big black X. After 90 days, depending on whether her calendar was filled with more circles or X’s, she had a clear idea of what her emotions were telling her.

When my boss finished telling the story, I excitedly thought about how the concept could be applied to any situation in life where you are uncertain – a relationship, a career, etc. From personal experience I know that my thoughts/emotions about certain things vary based on the week. Some weeks are awesome while others are filled with doubt. Luckily for me, the good weeks outnumber the bad, and even during the bad, I’m able to eventually focus on the positive. However, I do remember the times when I had to make big decisions about going back to school, accepting a job that would require me to move around for two years, etc. If only I had this “tool” back then to help me!

I wanted to share this because I’m assuming there are a lot of people out there that are conflicted about a relationship, a job, a major life decision, etc. And those kinds of thoughts/emotions can’t be sorted out in one day, week, or even month. Sometimes it takes time and a 90-day calendar to really put things in perspective.