10-10-10

Have you heard of the 10-10-10 guideline for making decisions? I just read about it in O magazine and it's stuck in my mind long enough to make me think it's worth sharing. Even while we're living in the current moment, enjoying the power of now and all that, we do need to make decisions that have longer term ramifications (or, as the folks in my yoga teacher training course would say, that generate good or bad karma). So, how do you know your making a good decision or taking a right action? Well, according to the author of the article that I read, you apply a 10-10-10 guideline and ask yourself how this action/decision is likely to play into the next 10 minutes, 10 hours and 10 years (I would add 10 weeks and 10 months, just because 10 years seems like an awfully long way away. I would also do a second round of questioning, adding on to the question "if I were to make this action/decision repeatedly"). So, for example, you may want to figure out if you should leave work on time despite a work crisis, so that you can make it to your child's ballet recital. How will each possible decision affect the next 10 minutes, hours, weeks, months and years? (Now try adding "if I were to make this action/decision repeatedly," just so you're ready to recognize a pattern if a similar decision-making process pops up again). Or, you want to figure out if you should stay home with your kids rather than work in the office at all. It's a nice reminder that at each of those slices at the 10 mark, things external to you are likely to be radically different. Some things that seem important now will have lost meaning at those milestones. Your action now can start to pitch things in one direction or another. We tend to succumb to what will serve us best in the next 10 minutes, but especially once you get into your late thirties, I think 10 minutes of self-serving gratitude tends to look pretty worthless if it is likely to compromise what happens around you in the next 10 hours or even weeks. Posture is another great example. If you slouch now, how is that likely to affect the next 10 minutes, hours, weeks, etc.? If you slouch repeatedly, how is that likely to affect the next 10 weeks, months, years? At your core, be the woman you would like to be in 10, 10, 10 and 10, and you will become that.