Anthony Robbins talks a lot about decisions. One of his lines is that quality of your life lies within quality of your decisions. There is a lot of truth in what he talks about. Think about it. Each time you are faced with a decision, you are making a choice that will affect events that shape your life. I know that there have been many times I've made some bad choices, and my life suffered as a result. And when I made better choices, my life improved. I know you've also had similar experiences.

So if quality of our decisions determines quality of our life, how do we go about making better choices? Most of time it comes down to experience and education. Every time we are faced with a choice, our mind reviews our past experiences to see if we have any information that relates to current situation. If we do have previous knowledge, and that knowledge is extensive, covering many different circumstances, then we have plenty of information with which to make a quality decision. If information we have is scanty and limited, then quality of our decision based on that information will be more questionable.

This sounds very good in theory, but let's see how it sounds in actual practice. Let's say that you've just made a decision to increase your income this year. How much information do you have regarding increasing income? If you're like most people, you learn a skill and get a job. If you perform that job well, then you get rewarded by a raise in pay and possibly an increase in responsibility. That increase in responsibility results in having to learn new skills. What this means, if that if you are like most people, information you have regarding increasing income leads you to believe that you have to get yourself promoted to a more responsible position or perform better in your current job to earn more money.

But is this only route to increased income? Is job you have now, or company you work for, only way you can make money? Obviously not, since there are many other people making money who are not in your company. One of best ideas that I ever came across for gathering best information on any subject (in order to make best decisions regarding that subject) was to find out who are people who excel in that subject. If you want to learn about physics, best people to talk to are physicists. If you want to learn about making money, best people to talk to are those making most money.

Consultants, coaches, accountants, engineers, and other solopreneurs starting a service business, make common mistakes that cost them to be ineffective with their resources. In turn, these mistakes bring on a slow, frustrating success or even force them to remove their shingle because they run out of resources, normally money.

You would think with all training and knowledge now available that these individuals would be making fewer mistakes. Actually, 2004 had a large increase in business failures due to selling a service before they cultivated their service.

You will want to see if any of these items are biting into your assets. You will want to be honest here:

1. You don't have all knowledge needed to bring your business to fruition, yet you think you do. Alternatively, you could be missing skills. Whatever you are missing, you are going to need finances to close holes -- either through a self-education process or using outside support.

2. You aren't honest with yourself on how much effort it needs to cultivate your ideas and projects. Do you start a project and give up after you work on it, and work on it, and lose momentum or energy to complete it? If you do this frequently, you want to evaluate your ego’s presence.

3. Do you buy into societies "quick get" philosophy? Are you always buying next best answer to slice bread? Stop chasing possibilities and get down to working your processes.

4. You are in it for wrong reasons. You have an eye on prize and don't want to work journey. If you want to make exceptional money, it’s going to take two or three times time you estimated. Is your eye on possibilities or on work? There is a time for both, do you know when its time, and when it’s not?