Hardest Decision Quotes

Taking a deep breathe, I made one of the hardest decisions of my life. I walked away.

The hardest thing about the road not taken is that you never know where it might have led.

One of the hardest decisions you'll ever face in life is choosing whether to walk away or try harder.

My choice helped me realize that sometimes the hardest decisions a person can make will most likely lead to the best outcomes.

In life, the hardest decisions often have to be made more than once. But each time, it gets easier.

Letting go of randomness is one of the hardest decisions a person can make.

sometimes the hardest decisions a person can make will most likely lead to the best outcomes.

Sometimes the hardest thing in life is to know which bridge to cross and which to burn

To my son, If you are reading this letter, then I am dead. I expect to die, if not today, then soon. I expect that Valentine will kill me. For all his talk of loving me, for all his desire for a right-hand man, he knows that I have doubts. And he is a man who cannot abide doubt. I do not know how you will be brought up. I do not know what they will tell you about me. I do not even know who will give you this letter. I entrust it to Amatis, but I cannot see what the future holds. All I know is that this is my chance to give you an accounting of a man you may well hate. There are three things you must know about me. The first is that I have been a coward. Throughout my life I have made the wrong decisions, because they were easy, because they were self-serving, because I was afraid. At first I believed in Valentine’s cause. I turned from my family and to the Circle because I fancied myself better than Downworlders and the Clave and my suffocating parents. My anger against them was a tool Valentine bent to his will as he bent and changed so many of us. When he drove Lucian away I did not question it but gladly took his place for my own. When he demanded I leave Amatis, the woman I love, and marry Celine, a girl I did not know, I did as he asked, to my everlasting shame. I cannot imagine what you might be thinking now, knowing that the girl I speak of was your mother. The second thing you must know is this. Do not blame Celine for any of this, whatever you do. It was not her fault, but mine. Your mother was an innocent from a family that brutalized her. She wanted only kindess, to feel safe and loved. And though my heart had been given already, I loved her, in my fashion, just as in my heart, I was faithful to Amatis. Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae. I wonder if you love Latin as I do, and poetry. I wonder who has taught you. The third and hardest thing you must know is that I was prepared to hate you. The son of myslef and the child-bride I barely knew, you seemed to be the culmination of all the wrong decisions I had made, all the small compromises that led to my dissolution. Yet as you grew inside my mind, as you grew in the world, a blameless innocent, I began to realize that I did not hate you. It is the nature of parents to see their own image in their children, and it was myself I hated, not you. For there is only one thing I wan from you, my son — one thing from you, and of you. I want you to be a better man than I was. Let no one else tell you who you are or should be. Love where you wish to. Believe as you wish to. Take freedom as your right. I don’t ask that you save the world, my boy, my child, the only child I will ever have. I ask only that you be happy. Stephen

We all lose sometimes. We fail to get what we want. Friends and loved ones leave. We make a decision we regret. We try our hardest and come up short. It's not the losing that defines us. It's how we lose. It's what we do afterward.

Not everything was black and white. It was often in the gray areas where the hardest decisions are made.

Two of the hardest decisions in life: the patience to wait for the right moment and the courage to accept whatever you encounter.

They were both fomidable, but they were also the two people he cared most about in the world-Worlds-and he just wanted to carry them safley forward to the future he imagined, in which no one's life was at stake and the hardest decision of any given day might be what to eat for breakfast, or where to make love.

Brendan suddenly 'came out' to me. In my experience, the hardest thing about having someone 'come out' to you is the 'pretending to be surprised' part. You want him to feel like what he’s telling you is Big. It’s like, if somebody tells you they’re pregnant, you don’t say, 'I did notice you’ve been eating like a hog lately.' Your gay friend has obviously made a big decision to say the words out loud. You don’t want him to realize that everybody’s known this since he was ten and he wanted to be Bert Lahr for Halloween. Not the Cowardly Lion, but Bert Lahr. 'Oh, my gosh, no waaaay?' You stall, trying to think of something more substantial to say. 'Is everyone, like, freaking out? What a… wow.

You can try your hardest to change something - exhaust every possibility- and sometimes it's still not enough. But almost means you were there. You did all you could. In the end, it's the smallest decisions that matter the most. The seemingly insignificant choices we make every day- To be honest with the people we love and ourselves- To let go of the things we can't control, and appreciate the things we can. Sometimes it's hard to see how much these things mean. But they add up. They mean everything.

sometimes the hardest decisions a person can make will most likely lead to the best outcomes

Trust me, my darling, leaving you is the hardest decision I make each day.

The hardest part is setting the camera on the tripod, or making the decision to bring the camera out of the car, or just raising the camera to your face, believing, by those actions, that whatever you find before you, whatever you find there, is going to be good.

You should always be prepared to defend your choices, whether just to yourself (sometimes this is the hardest) or to your coworkers, your friends, or your family. The quickest way for people to lose confidence in your ability to ever make a decision is for you to pass the buck, shrug your shoulders, or otherwise wuss out. Learning how to become a decision maker, and how you ultimately justify your choices, can define who you are.

Sometimes the hardest decisions are only meant to be made because a better purpose is waiting. Closing one door to walk through another doesn't mean goodbye. It means believing in yourself and intuition to create your best self in the unknown.

My choice helped me realise that sometimes the hardest decisions a person can make will most likely lead to the best outcomes.

choice helped me realize that sometimes the hardest decisions a person can make will most likely lead to the best outcomes.

choosing to be good is the hardest decision you can possibly make—especially when you possess magic as great as your own.

After all she'd overcome, boiling her choices down to Fate made her success feel unearned. Like he somehow had a hand in all of her hardest decisions and her biggest triumphs.

The hardest decision of the day is always the first decision you must make. It's the choice you make to TRY.

That’s the hardest thing about being a parent,” she explains. “Living through heartache, bearing your struggles, learning the hard lessons the hard way, and enduring years of climbing a wall only to fall back down and have to start all over again . . .” She holds my eyes, and her voice is weighted with sadness. “The tears, the waiting, the zero sense of who the hell you are, and then one day . . .” Her voice grows lighter and she looks happy. “You wake up, and finally you’re exactly the person you’ve always wanted to be. Strong, decisive, resolute, kind, brave . . . But then you also look in the mirror and you’re fifty-eight.” An

Now, she realized that the hardest test for a child of Athena wasn't leading a quest or facing death in combat. It was making the strategic decision to step back, to let someone else take the brunt of danger - especially if that person was your friend. She had to face the fact that she could not protect everyone she loved.

We all lose sometimes. We fail to get what we want. Friends and loved ones leave. We make a decision we regret. We try our hardest and come up short. It’s not the losing that defines us. It’s how we lose. It’s what we do afterward.

People fail to realize that living on the other side of the tracks in poverty isn’t what it appears to be. I didn’t make the decision to be poor. I am one of the hardest-working people I know. As I got older, I realized many people do not choose to live in poverty. The simple fact is that once you are living in it, it is hard to get out—because people are not willing to give you a chance.

I realized much later in life that the reason this decision between MIT and IBM was so agonizing was because it wasn't really about choosing a career; it was about deciding who I was, which part of myself I wanted to be, and that's the hardest decision any of us has to make.

Jenny was your sister. No matter how I felt about you, I would have never come between the two of you. I left because unlike Jenny and Chris, I had respect for them. For you. Please don’t ever call me selfish again, because that was the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make in my entire life.

When my grandfather went to war against Saddam Hussein after the invasion of Kuwait, he wrote a heartfelt letter to my dad about his worries and his fears. I remember the yellow ribbons tied around the trees throughout our suburban Texas neighborhood, and my dad remembers the gravity of the words his father penned: “I guess what I want you to know as a father is this: Every Human life is precious. When the question is asked ‘How many lives are you willing to sacrifice’—it tears at my heart. The answer, of course, is none—none at all.” When my dad was weighing whether to go to war against Iraq, when intelligence reports were telling him that Iraq had chemical weapons and when Saddam Hussein refused to allow weapons inspectors into his country, he wrote his own heartfelt letter to Barbara and me: “Yesterday I made the hardest decision a president has to make. I ordered young Americans into combat. It was an emotional moment for me because I fully understand the risks of war. More than once, I have hugged and wept with the loved ones of a soldier lost in combat in Afghanistan.” His words spoke of how much he didn’t want to go to war, how he had hoped the battle could be averted.

One of the hardest things about parenting is that you just never know what the outcome will be. It’s a total leap of faith. Even with decisions you feel fairly confident about (say, what to make for lunch), you just can’t be sure of the consequences they’ll have for this person you’re raising. Will you like the adult this kid—your kid—becomes?

Deciding to be happy has been one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make. For much of my adult life, I have consciously chosen to be unhappy, to stay in miserable situations or do things that brought me only heartache. I put what I knew would make me happy and healthy aside. Making the choice to be happy, as weird as it sounds, is much tougher.

In the moments that you fall hardest—when you lose a job, or find out a boyfriend is cheating on you, or realize that you made a bad financial decision—you can channel your shame, your anger, your desire, your loss. You can learn, take chances, change course. You can choose to become so successful that no one can ever put you in a situation like that again.

By starting with the easy things first and leaving the hardest for last, you can gradually hone your decision-making skills, so that by the end, it seems simple.

I came back though, didn't I?' Ruby nodded at her question. 'I will always come back to you, my love. As long as such a decision is in my power...and even then, I'll try my hardest to outmanoeuvre God Himself.

When you leave a job, one of the hardest decisions you have to make on cleaning out your desk is what to do with the coffinlike cardboard tray holding 958 fresh-smelling business cards. You can’t throw them out— they and the nameplate and a few sample payroll stubs are proof to yourself that you once showed up at that building every day and solved complicated, utterly absorbing problems there; unfortunately, the problems themselves, though they once obsessed you, and kept you working late night after night, and made you talk in your sleep, turn out to have been hollow: two weeks after your last day that already have contracted into inert pellets one-fiftieth of their former size; you find yourself unable to create the sense of what was really at stake, for it seems to have been the Hungarian 5/2 rhythm of the lived workweek alone that kept each fascinating crisis inflated to its full interdepartmental complexity. But coterminously, while the problems you were paid to solve collapse, the nod of the security guard, his sign-in book, the escalator ride, the things on your desk, the site of colleagues’ offices, their faces seen from characteristic angles, the features of the corporate bathroom, all miraculously expand: and in this way what was central and what was incidental end up exactly reversed.

Maybe life is a series of decisions with destiny thrown in. Maybe it is accepting that the impossible means opening another door. And maybe it means that you have to stand the strongest during the hardest of life’s times.

He finally understood why being a parent was the hardest job imaginable. You didn’t think for yourself anymore—every single decision was meant to put you in a position to continue caring for the person who depended on you. It made you raw and vulnerable.

It was never you. Leaving you was the hardest thing I've ever done and I've regretted that decision every second since the moment I walked out. I've made a lot of dumbass mistakes in my life, but letting you go is the one I'd give anything to erase. - Jason

The hardest part was having so much time to think. To have to make his own decisions. To wrestle with the guilt of being alive when by all rights he shouldn’t have been. Vince was used to measuring out his life in small moments, never letting himself look much ahead, and never daring to look behind…And now Vince had to make plans if he was going to survive.

Maybe the hardest part about taking a risk isn’t whether to take it, it’s when to take it. It’s never clear how much momentum is enough to justify leaving school. It’s never clear when it’s the right time to quit your job. Big decisions are rarely clear when you’re making them—they’re only clear looking back. The best you can do is take one careful step at a time.

Choosing a husband will be one of the biggest decisions you will ever make. This will be the man you will spend the rest of your life with. You will fall asleep next to him at night. Wake up next to him in the morning. Spend holidays together. Raise children together. Be grandparents together. Create your best memories together. Share your hardest moments together.

The first time you make a decision like that, a decision which rubs against all your morals, is the hardest. The second time, though, is not so hard. And that makes you feel a fraction better about the first time. And so on. But you can keep dividing and dividing and you'll never entirely get rid of the sourness in your stomach that you taste when you think back to the moment you could have said no.

I did it the hard way (a poem) ___________________ Many of the big dreams I dreamt, I dreamt, when I met a failed attempt. Life taught me to believe that Great ideas can start from a wretched hut. Many of the strongest steps I took, I took, when I was given the fiercest look. My passion pokes me to understand That people’s mockeries, I can withstand. Many of the fastest speeds I gained, I gained when I was bitterly stained. I first thought the only way was to quit As I tried again, I no longer have guilt. Many of the bravest decisions I made, I made, when my life was about to fade. I was frustrated and ripe to sink. But then I strive to release the ink. Many of the longest journeys I started, I started, having no resource; money parted I relied on God my creator all dawn long And at dusk He gave me a new song. Many of the hardest questions I tackled, I tackled, when I was heckled. They were very troublesome to settle But I make it happen little by little Yet, it was not I, but the Lord Jesus The saviour who gives me success. In Him, through Him and by Him I have the liberty to do everything with vim. I don’t want to enjoy this liberty alone. You too must step out of your comfort zone. It’s not easy, but you can do it anyway. Jesus is the life, the truth and the way.

By looking after his relatives' interests as he did, Napoleon furthermore displayed incredible weakness on the purely human level. When a man occupies such a position, he should eliminate all his family feeling. Napoleon, on the contrary, placed his brothers and sisters in posts of command, and retained them in these posts even after they'd given proofs of their incapability. All that was necessary was to throw out all these patently incompetent relatives. Instead of that, he wore himself out with sending his brothers and sisters, regularly every month, letters containing reprimands and warnings, urging them to do this and not to do that, thinking he could remedy their incompetence by promising them money, or by threatening not to give them any more. Such illogical behaviour can be explained only by the feeling Corsicans have for their families, a feeling in which they resemble the Scots. By thus giving expression to his family feeling, Napoleon introduced a disruptive principle into his life. Nepotism, in fact, is the most formidable protection imaginable : the protection of the ego. But wherever it has appeared in the life of a State—the monarchies are the best proof—it has resulted in weakening and decay. Reason : it puts an end to the principle of effort. In this respect, Frederick the Great showed himself superior to Napoleon—Frederick who, at the most difficult moments of his life, and when he had to take the hardest decisions, never forgot that things are called upon to endure. In similar cases, Napoleon capitulated. It's therefore obvious that, to bring his life's work to a successful conclusion, Frederick the Great could always rely on sturdier collaborators than Napoleon could. When Napoleon set the interests of his family clique above all, Frederick the Great looked around him for men, and, at need, trained them himself. Despite all Napoleon's genius, Frederick the Great was the most outstanding man of the eighteenth century. When seeking to find a solution for essential problems concerning the conduct of affairs of State, he refrained from all illogicality. It must be recognised that in this field his father, Frederick-William, that buffalo of a man, had given him a solid and complete training. Peter the Great, too, clearly saw the necessity for eliminating the family spirit from public life. In a letter to his son—a letter I was re-reading recently—he informs him very clearly of his intention to disinherit him and exclude him from the succession to the throne. It would be too lamentable, he writes, to set one day at the head of Russia a son who does not prepare himself for State affairs with the utmost energy, who does not harden his will and strengthen himself physically. Setting the best man at the head of the State—that's the most difficult problem in the world to solve.

Livia used her mouth to warm any part of his body that felt cold. As she sucked his fingers, she heard a decision in his breathing. He would have her here, now. Blake gathered the clothes and helped Livia lay back on the makeshift bed. For a moment he took her in with a smile then he covered her body with his. “Lying under me. You’re lying under me,” he breathed. Livia felt him enter her and gasped uncontrollably in pure pleasure. Alarmed, Blake stopped and looked inquisitively. “Don’t stop. Just don’t.” Livia clenched and unclenched her muscles, hugging him from the inside. Blake’s green eyes rolled into his head. There was no talking anymore. Just two together, struggling to give and take pleasure in the same movements. Blake braced himself with one arm and traced her to where her pulse pounded the hardest against her skin. Livia offered a tangled mix of his name and assorted requests, each of which he indulged. When he lifted her leg to his shoulder, Livia wasn’t sure she was that flexible. Then he moved inside her again, and Livia didn’t care if she was that flexible. Break my damn leg if you have to, just get deeper.

The greatest teams I have worked with over the years were all structured with a few remarkable exceptions to the rules. During my years serving on the board of sweetgreen, a chain of locally sourced seasonal-food kitchens, I was struck by how well the company’s three cofounders, Jonathan, Nic, and Nate, functioned as tri-CEOs. When I first joined the board, many of my peers told me “Good luck—that is nuts!” But the three of them had transformed the traditional CEO role to uniquely serve the company. They divided and conquered most functions in the business but shared the same core values and intuitively knew which decisions could be made by any of them, only one of them, or required all of them. “I feel like we’re pretty lucky because we can share the responsibility of taking action. It’s not just one person’s job to figure something out. It’s not just one person that has all of the weight on their shoulders,” Jonathan told me when I asked him about the arrangement. Nic added,

I did it the hard way Many of the big dreams I dreamt, I dreamt, when I met a failed attempt. Life taught me to believe that Great ideas can start from a wretched hut. Many of the strongest steps I took, I took, when I was given the fiercest look. My passion pokes me to understand That people’s mockeries, I can withstand. Many of the fastest speeds I gained, I gained when I was bitterly stained. I first thought the only way was to quit As I tried again, I no longer have guilt. Many of the bravest decisions I made, I made, when my life was about to fade. I was frustrated and ripe to sink. But then I strive to release the ink. Many of the longest journeys I started, I started, having no resource; money parted I relied on God my creator all dawn long And at dusk He gave me a new song. Many of the hardest questions I tackled, I tackled, when I was heckled. They were very troublesome to settle But I make it happen little by little Yet, it was not I, but the Lord Jesus The saviour who gives me success. In Him, through Him and by Him I have the liberty to do everything with vim. I don’t want to enjoy this liberty alone. You too must step out of your comfort zone. It’s not easy, but you can do it anyway. Jesus is the life, the truth and the way.

Monkeys and pedestals is a mental model that helps you quit sooner. Pedestals are the part of the problem you know you can already solve, like designing the perfect business card or logo. The hardest thing is training the monkey. When faced with a complex, ambitious goal, (a) identify the hard thing first; (b) try to solve for that as quickly as possible; and (c) beware of false progress. Building pedestals creates the illusion that you are making progress toward your goal, but doing the easy stuff is a waste of time if the hard stuff is actually impossible. Tackling the monkey first gets you to no faster, limiting the time, effort, and money you sink into a project, making it easier to walk away. When we butt up against a hard problem we can’t solve, we have a tendency to turn to pedestal-building rather than choosing to quit. Advance planning and precommitment contracts increase the chances you will quit sooner. When you enter into a course of action, create a set of kill criteria. This is a list of signals you might see in the future that would tell you it’s time to quit. Kill criteria will help inoculate you against bad decision-making when you’re “in it” by limiting the number of decisions you’ll have to make once you’re already in the gains or in the losses. In organizations, kill criteria allow people a different way to get rewarded beyond dogged and blind pursuit of a project until the bitter end.

As in everything, nature is the best instructor, even as regards selection. One couldn't imagine a better activity on nature's part than that which consists in deciding the supremacy of one creature over another by means of a constant struggle. While we're on the subject, it's somewhat interesting to observe that our upper classes, who've never bothered about the hundreds of thousands of German emigrants or their poverty, give way to a feeling of compassion regarding the fate of the Jews whom we claim the right to expel. Our compatriots forget too easily that the Jews have accomplices all over the world, and that no beings have greater powers of resistance as regards adaptation to climate. Jews can prosper anywhere, even in Lapland and Siberia. All that love and sympathy, since our ruling class is capable of such sentiments, would by rights be applied exclusively—if that class were not corrupt—to the members of our national community. Here Christianity sets the example. What could be more fanatical, more exclusive and more intolerant than this religion which bases everything on the love of the one and only God whom it reveals? The affection that the German ruling class should devote to the good fellow-citizen who faithfully and courageously does his duty to the benefit of the community, why is it not just as fanatical, just as exclusive and just as intolerant? My attachment and sympathy belong in the first place to the front-line German soldier, who has had to overcome the rigours of the past winter. If there is a question of choosing men to rule us, it must not be forgotten that war is also a manifestation of life, that it is even life's most potent and most characteristic expression. Consequently, I consider that the only men suited to become rulers are those who have valiantly proved themselves in a war. In my eyes, firmness of character is more precious than any other quality. A well toughened character can be the characteristic of a man who, in other respects, is quite ignorant. In my view, the men who should be set at the head of an army are the toughest, bravest, boldest, and, above all, the most stubborn and hardest to wear down. The same men are also the best chosen for posts at the head of the State—otherwise the pen ends by rotting away what the sword has conquered. I shall go so far as to say that, in his own sphere, the statesman must be even more courageous than the soldier who leaps from his trench to face the enemy. There are cases, in fact, in which the courageous decision of a single statesman can save the lives of a great number of soldiers. That's why pessimism is a plague amongst statesmen. One should be able to weed out all the pessimists, so that at the decisive moment these men's knowledge may not inhibit their capacity for action. This last winter was a case in point. It supplied a test for the type of man who has extensive knowledge, for all the bookworms who become preoccupied by a situation's analogies, and are sensitive to the generally disastrous epilogue of the examples they invoke. Agreed, those who were capable of resisting the trend needed a hefty dose of optimism. One conclusion is inescapable: in times of crisis, the bookworms are too easily inclined to switch from the positive to the negative. They're waverers who find in public opinion additional encouragement for their wavering. By contrast, the courageous and energetic optimist—even although he has no wide knowledge— will always end, guided by his subconscious or by mere commonsense, in finding a way out.

Son, you know what we stand for,” I told him. “We’re all trying to live for God. We’re not going to let you visit our home while you’re carrying on like this. We’re paying for your apartment. We’re paying for your truck. You’ve got a decision to make. You’re either going to come home and basically live under house arrest because we don’t trust you, or you can hit the road-with no vehicle, of course. Somebody can drop you off at the highway and then you’ll be on your own. You can go live your life; we’ll pray for you and hope that you come back one day. Those are your two choices.” Jep looked at me, lowered his head, and started pouring out his sins to me. He said he’d been taking pills, smoking marijuana, getting drunk, and on and on. He was crying the whole time, as he confessed his sins to us and God. I’ll never forget what Jep said next. He looked up at me and asked, “Dad, all I want to ask you is what took you so long to rescue me?” After Jep said that to me, everyone in the room was crying. “You still have a choice,” I told him. “Well, my choice is I want to come home,” he said. Jase has always been our most straitlaced son, so he was the hardest on Jep when he strayed. “Son, you can’t hang out with those people,” Jase told him. “Daddy won’t let ‘em get to me,” Jep said. “Daddy won’t and we won’t, either,” Jase promised him. “But you have to come to all the good things to help you. You’ve got to find better friends. You can’t be running around. You have to break it off with the bad influences.” Thankfully, our second prodigal son was coming home. It was a heart-wrenching episode for all of us. Alan was so distressed by his little brother’s struggles that he left our house, drove down the road, and then stopped and dropped to his knees and wept in a field.

Very soon, I would have to make that choice. For the briefest of moments, I wished God had never given us the ability to change, to choose, to love. This would be the hardest decision of my existence.

Her decision to leave Ty was one of the hardest, but Lyric knew it was time to throw in the towel.

Deliberately ending another creature’s life is surely one of the hardest decisions we will ever have to make.

But if writing is one of the best jobs in the world, it’s also one of the hardest—it’s all decision-making, all day long. This word or that one, over and over and over again, all the way to the end of the sentence. And even if you get to the end of a sentence, you still have to start again at the beginning of the next.

hierarchical authority could always be used to sort out the hardest parts. Now, in the ‘knowledge workforce,’ more democratic models of decision making are being used.

I did it the hard way ( a poem) _________________________ Many of the big dreams I dreamt, I dreamt, when I met a failed attempt. Life taught me to believe that Great ideas can start from a wretched hut. Many of the strongest steps I took, I took, when I was given the fiercest look. My passion pokes me to understand That people’s mockeries, I can withstand. Many of the fastest speeds I gained, I gained when I was bitterly stained. I first thought the only way was to quit As I tried again, I no longer have guilt. Many of the bravest decisions I made, I made, when my life was about to fade. I was frustrated and ripe to sink. But then I strive to release the ink. Many of the longest journeys I started, I started, having no resource; money parted I relied on God my creator all dawn long And at dusk He gave me a new song. Many of the hardest questions I tackled, I tackled, when I was heckled. They were very troublesome to settle But I make it happen little by little Yet, it was not I, but the Lord Jesus The saviour who gives me success. In Him, through Him and by Him I have the liberty to do everything with vim. I don’t want to enjoy this liberty alone. You too must step out of your comfort zone. It’s not easy, but you can do it anyway. Jesus is the life, the truth and the way. ___________________________ Israelmore Ayivor

I must talk to Kennit first. He will tell me when he is ready for us to have a baby." "Never," Bolt said flatly. "What?" "Never wait for a male on any such decision. You are the queen. You decide. Males are not made for such decisions. I have seen it time and time again. They would have you wait for days of sunshine and wealth and plenty. Yet to a male, enough is never sufficient, and plenty never reached. A queen knows that when times are hardest and game most scarce, that is when one must care most about the continuance of the race. Some things are not for males to decide.

The hardest decisions in life are not between good and bad or right and wrong, but between two goods or two rights.” – Joe Andrew

You know what is so cool, Jenna?" "What's that, my little man?" "My friends? All their dads let them win all the time. Board games, cards, video games, sports. My dad? He always tries his hardest because he says he wants me to try my hardest, and because he only wants me to know what it feels like to really win for real, and because he says the only thing better in the world than a winner is a gracious loser." I am gobsmacked. First of all, the fact that Noah appreciates the fact that his dad has never let him win all these years, and second, that it was actually a conscientious parenting decision as opposed to a juvenile need to win that drives Wayne's actions. "Yeah, I bet it feels really good to know that you won even though he was trying his hardest to beat you." I hope no one else can see the lightbulb over my head right now. "It. Is. AWESOME.

The hardest part is letting people live with the consequences of their actions and decisions. You don’t need to clean up after everyone.

hardest decision that he ever made was to send Allison to be educated in England. He made the long trip by ship

I knew it when I made the hardest decision of my life. I knew not only that I would lose you forever, but also that I would be hated and despised forever by the one person I love more than life itself. I made the choice. I have to live with the consequences.

He is my first love, and the loss of a first love is always the hardest. My clothes now drape like a curtain from not eating, and I am forgetting basic things that I should remember. I contemplate my future as I am not getting any younger, and I must come to a decision soon. I have no other prospect for marriage, and at fifteen, I am at a marriageable age.

Your worst battle is between what you feel and what you know; and you know you made the right decision when even after you picked the hardest and most painful choice, you are at peace.

The decision looked easy... individually we can live our best lives was....... the hardest. It saved us

Yet the hardest part of these decisions was neither the technological nor economic transformations required. It was changing the culture—the mindset and instincts of hundreds of thousands of people who had grown up in an undeniably successful company, but one that had for decades been immune to normal competitive and economic forces. The challenge was making that workforce live, compete, and win in the real world. It was like taking a lion raised for all of its life in captivity and suddenly teaching it to survive in the jungle.

Healing on different levels As far as Reiki is concerned, it is normal to distinguish four stages of healing: Physical: anything to do with the body (our own and others). Emotional: how we respond (consciously and subconsciously) to and deal with our experiences. Mental: our attitudes and patterns of thinking (decisions, lifestyle choices, and directions). Spiritual: a larger picture (finding meaning, acceptance, and perhaps the hardest thing of all, forgiveness). The levels are interconnected in many, if not most, cases. For example, another physical problem (a painful knee) might have caused it (a twisted ankle that affected the knee balance). Physical problems can also affect our feelings (I'm upset because my sore knee stops me from walking in the sunshine) or vice versa (I'm sad, and this represents my body posture, which contributes to anxiety and headaches). Furthermore, a lot of research has been carried out into the body-mind link, including the healing effects of positive thinking and the negative effects of stress. For Reiki, this means that there is often more behind a problem than the eye can see, and we need to be open to the possibility of more than one degree of recovery.

Healing on different levels As far as Reiki is concerned, it is normal to distinguish four stages of healing: Physical: anything to do with the body (our own and others). Emotional: how we respond (consciously and subconsciously) to and deal with our experiences. Mental: our attitudes and patterns of thinking (decisions, lifestyle choices, and directions). Spiritual: a larger picture (finding meaning, acceptance, and perhaps the hardest thing of all, forgiveness).

Mike Adams was by far the hardest for me to read. He was supportive in my first few weeks, but he was the least visible, occupied by prior projects. I also understood the least about the kinds of programming that were his strengths. Although I wasn't a programmer, I did have a computer science degree, something that, ironically, neither Adams, nor Peatling, nor Beau had. I didn't write code mostly because early in my career, I realized I did best at the level above code: leading teams, working with ideas, and shepherding projects to ship. Over my career, I've often been asked how I could manage programmers without doing programming myself. I believe I can manage anyone making anything provided two things are true: clarity and trust. If there is clarity between us on the goal and how we'll know when we're done, then we can speak the same language about what we need to do to get there. I knew enough about programming to call bullshit when needed and ask insightful questions. Making good things is about managing hundreds of trade-off decisions, and that's one of my best skills. Regarding clarity, most teams in the working world are starving for it. Layers of hierarchy create conflicting goals. Many teams have leaders who've never experienced clarity in their entire lives: they don't know what to look for, much less what to do when they find it. Thinking clearly, as trite as it sounds, was my strength.

Distance is immeasurable. Only not as far as I want, but farther than I should. I reach the point where I capitulate to reason and turn around. That's the hardest part of all. Making that decision to come back. How much easier to let the night take me, swallow and digest me, and excrete me into the afterworld. [Rose Yates]

We all make decisions, Babs. The hardest part is learning to live with them.

But anyone can sit and “kick around ideas” all day. That’s the easy part. The hard part is deciding to take the risk of actually bringing that product to life. The hardest part is getting past the head noise: What will my family think? What if my product sucks? What if I get a negative review? While I will help you with the “how to,” you have to go all in on getting through the mental hurdles. It’s time to make a decision: Are you willing to go all in?

You know better than anyone how hard it can be for us.” I shake my head. “I have to ask myself when I come home, do I want someone who completely understands the struggle? Or someone who completely understands me? Someone I can’t wait to come home to, someone who makes me laugh on the hardest days of my life? Every single decision isn’t filtered through my race. Love isn’t.

One of the hardest decisions you'll ever face in life is choosing whether to walk away or try harder.

David faced the difficult challenge of deciding whether to pivot or persevere. This is one of the hardest decisions entrepreneurs face. The goal of creating learning milestones is not to make the decision easy; it is to make sure that there is relevant data in the room when it comes time to decide.

The first thought / the functional job When did you first realize you needed something to solve [your problem]? What were you doing, or trying to do, when this happened? Before you began [using the current solution], how did you solve these same problems in the past? When did you realize the old way wasn’t working? When were you forced to make a change? Was there a deadline or specific event you needed to be ready for? What alternatives did you consider before using [the solution]? What was good or bad about each of those? What was the hardest part of figuring out what solution to use? Was there any point where you got stuck? With [the solution], what can you do that you couldn’t do before? Did you alone make this decision to change, or was someone else involved? What other changes did you have to make to integrate [the solution] into your life? Emotional and social jobs Tell me about how you looked for a product to solve your problem. What job are you ultimately trying to get done? Were you able to accomplish this with [your product]? What kind of solutions did you try? Or not try? Why or why not? Did you ask anyone else what they thought about the purchase you were about to make? What was the conversation like when you talked about purchasing the product with your [friend/colleague/ boss/parents]? Before you purchased it, did you imagine what using the product would be like? Where were you when you were thinking this? Did you have any anxiety about the purchase? Did you hear something about the product that made you nervous? What was it? Why did it make you nervous? How do you use the product you’ve purchased? Are there features you use all the time? How? Are there features you never use? Why not? What’s something you wish [your product] could do?

Now, she realized that the hardest test for a child of Athena wasn’t leading a quest or facing death in combat. It was making the strategic decision to step back, to let someone else take the brunt of the danger – especially when that person was your friend. She had to face the fact that she couldn’t protect everyone she loved. She couldn’t solve every problem.

It’s as if buy-in and alignment come only from being anchored by something in the visual cortex. “When evaluating a product or a service, [one’s] brain is working to understand and make conclusions, to come to a decision. Imagery is a superb way to demonstrate something and to provide answers to the questions your brain is asking,

Sometimes the right decision is the hardest decision of all. We came here to make a difference. We can no longer do that. As much as I hate to say it, it’s time to leave.

The hardest part of being a parent is accepting that not every decision you made for your children benefited them as much as you hoped it would. You do your best and pray it’s enough to help them become decent, well-adjusted humans making a difference in the world.

Nothing is more profound than contemplating your feelings about how you want to be treated when you are dying, or how much suffering and disability you are willing to endure in return for more time on earth. Nothing could be kinder to people who love you than to give them clear guidance for the hardest decisions they may ever make. And little could be more empowering than protecting yourself from unwanted medical treatments that now, far too often, dehumanize modern death.

Monkeys and pedestals is a mental model that helps you quit sooner. Pedestals are the part of the problem you know you can already solve, like designing the perfect business card or logo. The hardest thing is training the monkey. When faced with a complex, ambitious goal, (a) identify the hard thing first; (b) try to solve for that as quickly as possible; and (c) beware of false progress. Building pedestals creates the illusion that you are making progress toward your goal, but doing the easy stuff is a waste of time if the hard stuff is actually impossible. Tackling the monkey first gets you to no faster, limiting the time, effort, and money you sink into a project, making it easier to walk away. When we butt up against a hard problem we can’t solve, we have a tendency to turn to pedestal-building rather than choosing to quit. Advance planning and precommitment contracts increase the chances you will quit sooner. When you enter into a course of action, create a set of kill criteria. This is a list of signals you might see in the future that would tell you it’s time to quit. Kill criteria will help inoculate you against bad decision-making when you’re “in it” by limiting the number of decisions you’ll have to make once you’re already in the gains or in the losses. In organizations, kill criteria allow people a different way to get rewarded beyond dogged and blind pursuit of a project until the bitter end. A common, simple way to develop kill criteria is with “states and dates:” “If by (date), I have/haven’t (reached a particular state), I’ll quit.

Trust me, my darling, leaving you is the hardest decision I make eash day.

No, not every Ross is going to find their Rachel, and not every Ron will snog their Hermione. But the happiest of times can come from making the hardest decisions. Trust your friend to be gentle if they don't feel the same way and understand that, in reality, friendships change all the time. It's futile ignoring your feelings to maintain something that will likely change anyway, regardless of what you do.

Chapter 2 Summary Quitting on time usually feels like quitting too early. The hardest time to make a quitting decision is when you’re in it. Our intuition is that quitting will slow down our progress. The reverse is actually true. If you walk away from something that is no longer worthwhile, that frees you up to switch to something that is more likely to help you achieve your goals—and you’ll get there faster. When the time is objectively right to quit, nothing particularly dire will be happening right at that moment. Getting the timing right means looking into the future and seeing that the chances things will go your way are too slim. Thinking in expected value helps you figure out if the path you are on is worth sticking to. EV is not just about money. It can be measured in health, well-being, happiness, time, self-fulfillment, satisfaction in relationships, or anything else that affects you. If you feel like the choice between persevering and walking away is a close call, it’s likely that quitting is the better choice. In hindsight, we can see when someone has waited too long to quit, and we tend to be harsh in our judgment of those people. But when someone quits before it seems obvious to others, we mock them for quitting too early. That’s the quitting bind.

My choice helped me realize that sometimes the hardest decisions a person can make will likely lead to the best outcomes.

Family, social, and environmental responsibility was the most revolutionary of all the values at the time, especially for a publicly traded Fortune 500 company. I was sure that these values would cause the toughest debates and hardest decisions among the leadership team; I was wrong. The team was very enaged and proud of these values. They helped us to see the inextricable connection between the company and people, families, communities, and the environment. We made courageous and radical decisions to align our policies and practices and behaviors with these important values.

helped me realize that sometimes the hardest decisions a person can make will most likely lead to the best outcomes.

The combination of cutting ties with the McCartneys and losing his father hit Denny hard. “Leaving the band was the hardest decision I ever had to make in my life,” the drummer said, “and it was one that affected my life profoundly. The years that followed were not pretty; for many, many years, they weren’t pretty. I didn’t know what to do with the situation. I had a problem with alcohol over it, which I solved. It was a very, very difficult journey for my wife and I to go through.

Quitting on time usually feels like quitting too early. The hardest time to make a quitting decision is when you’re in it. Our intuition is that quitting will slow down our progress. The reverse is actually true. If you walk away from something that is no longer worthwhile, that frees you up to switch to something that is more likely to help you achieve your goals—and you’ll get there faster. When the time is objectively right to quit, nothing particularly dire will be happening right at that moment. Getting the timing right means looking into the future and seeing that the chances things will go your way are too slim. Thinking in expected value helps you figure out if the path you are on is worth sticking to. EV is not just about money. It can be measured in health, well-being, happiness, time, self-fulfillment, satisfaction in relationships, or anything else that affects you. If you feel like the choice between persevering and walking away is a close call, it’s likely that quitting is the better choice. In hindsight, we can see when someone has waited too long to quit, and we tend to be harsh in our judgment of those people. But when someone quits before it seems obvious to others, we mock them for quitting too early. That’s the quitting bind.

In leadership, some decisions are hard to make, but that is what leadership is all about. It is about making the hardest decisions and facing the harshest conditions to improve the followers’ living conditions.

One of the hardest things about being in command is having to give orders that you know are impossible or, at the very least, difficult for people to follow. You want them to do as they are told, because only those at the top know the ‘big picture’, but you want your people to make decisions, to act on the spur of the moment and take advantage of opportunities when they present themselves.

Yes, asking for a divorce hurt. Yes, I was heartbroken. But no, I don’t regret it. My choice helped me realize that sometimes the hardest decisions a person can make will most likely lead to the best outcomes.

Chapter 6 offers up strategies to improve decisions about when to quit, including the importance of tackling the hardest part of a project first, as well as ways to develop benchmarks, criteria, and signals, called kill criteria, that will help ensure you quit sooner when persisting is no longer in your best interest.

Sacrifice. The hardest part isn’t giving your life for the cause, it’s knowing what your sacrifice and decisions will do to those you love.

Not everything was black and white. It was often in the gray areas where the hardest decisions were made.

After all she’d overcome, boiling her choices down to Fate made her success feel unearned. Like he somehow had a hand in all her hardest decisions and her biggest triumphs.