Chapter 1: So your indecision is final! Chapter one spells out the impact that your indecision is having on your making the most of your one and only life. You’ve tried everything from professional counseling, late night talks with friends to self-help books. Each time you think you’ve made a decision, you find yourself back in the loop, raking over excellent reasons to stay and ever better reasons to leave. The chapter highlights the confusion you feel by your inability to take action, how this is diminishing you as a person, how you are stagnating and making yourself ill. The chapter ends with the three possible options you have if you’re to live a meaningful life. Chapter 2: Why no change? Chapter two addresses the problem with change and what keeps you indecisive. It explains how you are blocking yourself from becoming everything you could be and how you are weighed down with fearful thoughts and anxiety. You are challenged with the question of how it feels now - standing still in life, not taking the risks of crossing your ‘Rubicon’, playing it safe and being in the same position week after week, year after year. The chapter confronts you with the harsh reality that either way – jumping into the abyss of uncertainty or standing still, you cannot escape stress and anxiety, so you must stop trying. Chapter 3: Will either decision really end in catastrophe? This chapter shows the impact that your ‘Catastrophic Fantasies’ have on your indecision; how these hold you back rather than allow you to take the risk of change. It challenges you to consider that, by succumbing to your fears, you may be sitting in the ‘Waiting Room of Life’, never becoming the person you could be. You can no longer sit and wait for it to feel safe to make your move; it never will and, by hoping against hope, you are already regretting a wasted life. You don’t want the following words on your tombstone do you? - Born 1973 Died 2005, Buried 2067 Chapter 4: Stop revving your engine with your foot on the brake Chapter 4 confronts you with the reality of your situation: Have you convinced yourself that you’re merely hovering in limbo at a sunny crossroads, eating a picnic, whilst weighing up the pros and cons of which path to take – stay or go? Or, are you in reality in a situation of extreme conflict; the conflict between moving and not moving?
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It’s like an aircraft on a short runway where the pilot must rev the engine whilst keeping one foot firmly on the break. This would be completely senseless without the clear intention, when the right moment came, to release the brakes and take off. Otherwise the aircraft would shake itself to pieces. So rather than hovering in limbo, are you in fact shaking yourself to pieces, tearing yourself apart? Chapter 5: Your New Perspective This chapter summarizes your new perspective, outlined in the previous chapters. It shows that most people convince themselves that they don’t have any choices in life. You too may have lulled yourself into believing that because your world is full of commitments and obligations, you don’t have the freedom to choose to break away or demand major improvements in your relationship. You may well feel that you have no choice but to live your life for everyone else, feel trapped and blame others for it. Whereas, if you’re to live a meaningful and fulfilled life, you need to accept that you are in the situation you find yourself because you have made choices, freely, and are therefore totally responsible for your predicament. It also introduces the Six Million Dollar questions included in the following four chapters that help you realize the truth of this new perspective, give you new ways of understanding your current dilemma and the courage to finally change your life Chapter 6: The Six Million Dollar Questions: Accepting responsibility for your impasse Many people find it difficult to change their lives because in worrying about what people will think, or their social and financial obligations, they blame others and their situation for their own behaviour. The first set of Six Million Dollar Questions encourage you to challenge such beliefs, assumptions and behaviour, with the following questions: ‘Who are you trying please?’ ’Are you your own jailor?’ and ‘Who’s pulling your strings?’ The chapter demonstrates that no one has put you “in bondage”. You are not as trapped as you think you are, and that you are free to choose to do anything with your life. It shows that you cannot detach the burden of responsibility for your indecision and shift it elsewhere: ’One is entirely responsible for one’s life, not only for one’s actions but for one’s failures to act’. Chapter 7: The Six Million Dollar Questions: Accepting the downside of your decision One reason why people still struggle with crossing their Rubicon is that when you decide to do one thing you are met head on with the fact that you will have to give up s omething else, The next set of Six Million Dollar Questions continue the challenge by asking: ‘What are you waiting for’, ‘Are you avoiding your responsibility for an already wasted life?’, ‘Are you hoping someone will hold your hand’ and ‘Who has the answer?’.
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