Jerrimiah Stonecastle - Decisions

DECISIONS

Jerrimiah Stonecastle

Copyright 2018 Jerrimiah Stonecastle

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 9781980372295

Cover design by Jerrimiah Stonecastle

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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DEDICATION

To Master Ronald Henderson.

R.I.P.

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you Ms Rosemarie Poggi for your academic help. You are a godsend.

1 the first decision

A fter the alarm clock goes off, youre ready to make your first decision. That decision is whether to stay in bed, or to get up and have a positive and productive day.

Never cut a tree down in the wintertime. Never make a negative decision in the low time. Never make your most important decisions when you are in your worst moods. Wait. Be patient. The storm will pass. The spring will come.

Robert H. Schuller

You may think this is a reflexive and natural action, but it is not as easy as you may think, just because you take it for granted. You assume that youre going to have a great day because you have a great job. You assume youre going to have a positive day because you surpassed your sales quota the day before. You expect that the argument that you had with your loving wife last night, which resulted in no resolution; and no sex, will not affect your work performance today.

However, you would be gravely wrong, or nave in that assumption. The residue from the day before has a very significant impact on how our day will progress. Im not saying that you can predict the future, but it is predictable that if you wake up with a negative attitude, youre going to have a negative day. If you wake up optimistic and enthusiastic, with gratitude in your attitude, youre going to have a positive day.

When your values are clear to you, making decisions becomes easier.

Roy E. Disney

I can hear the naysayers now saying, What if youre broadsided by a texting driver on your way to work?

I can tell you that by having a positive attitude, and if youre physically able to after the collision, youre going to calmly handle the crisis in a civilized manner. Youre going to check to see if the moron is ok. Youre going to insure that the cars are moved safely off to the side of the road. Then youre going to call the police and exchange information. Finally, youre going to thank God again for being alive.

But what if you were still fuming about the argument you had with your wife the night before? What if you were wondering if you were going to get fired because of your poor sales performance? You might react differently in the above scenario. You might jump out of your vehicle ranting like a lunatic. You may be so ballistic that you might even pummel the texter. In fact during your assault, you might be so enraged that you wont notice the police badge and gun the driver is wearing.

A wise man makes his own decisions, an ignorant man follows the public opinion.

Grantland Rice

The next day when you wake up in the cell, your even more pissed off wife, who had to bail you out, is now cursing you out and telling everyone in earshot what a loser you are. Your sales performance drops even more, and your boss has left a voice mail saying that you were fired for not calling in. Sounds farfetched or can some of you see how an incident like this could have been defused, if you had been in a more positive frame of mind?

Of course you can never know when it is going to rain, but at least you can be prepared by bringing an umbrella with you. I like to establish in my mind first, before I even hop out of bed, that life is beautiful and worth getting out of bed for. Does that sound too simplistic? I wonder how many of the homeless people, that you pass by every day on your way to work, woke up one day and decided that life was not worth getting out of bed for?

I made decisions that I regret, and I took them as learning experiences... I'm human, not perfect, like anybody else.

Queen Latifah

We should not assume that all homeless people were regular folks like you and I. People who might had become overwhelmed with debt, mental or physical illnesses, and decided the constant struggle was not worth the effort to get out of bed. I will argue that wealth and prosperity doesnt always mean that you will have a desire to get up out of your brass bed. If that were the case, why do so many rich and famous people commit suicide, drug or drink themselves to death?