Yesterday I had my day all planned out, 12 hours, three events in three different cities! Well as you can probably imagine, by about 10am something had to give. My great plan had a few holes in it, most I anticipated, but one critical decision I didn’t. Uh oh, I had a tough decision to make, I could never make it home in enough time to make it home to pick up my outfit for event number three without missing the keynote speaker who I really wanted to see, but I was dressed a little more casually than I would like UGH! Has anything like this ever happened to you?

I had two and a half hours. I could go to the mall and buy an outfit, and that would leave me an hour to get to my destination looking like a million bucks, sounds like a fool proof idea right. Since this was not a planned trip, I had to create a budget so cooler heads would prevail in the case of an emergency of finding the perfect outfit that cost as much as my mortgage, so off I went.

When I got to the mall I went to some of my favorite stores. Thirty minutes into my trip, I found a nice sweater, a few cute shirt, and a great dress that went significantly above my budget (that I wouldn’t even try on since I could tempt myself beyond my ability to exercise self control). Forty-five minutes into my 1 hour trip, I had two headbands. This is not quite what I was hoping for….then just like this it happened. I walked into J.Crew and found the perfect skirt. It was beautiful, and I was in love, now there is only one problem, I came here for an outfit, and with no shirt this skirt is a non-factor. One more store and then I have to go. I walked in the store and found the perfect dress it was cute, and it was my size. I tried it on, and it was perfect except for one thing, you could see my bra. I needed to buy a camisole, and a sweater to at least to make it acceptable, and I was out of time. I’ve been in this full feature film before maybe you have as well, I buy this dress and everything else, blow my budget, feel uncomfortable the whole event because I am worry about how I look, and then kick myself later for not being willing to walk away since I will never wear this dress again. It was time to go. I could stay, and miss a great opportunity to hear someone I really respected and wanted to learn from, or I could show up to this event on time with the outfit I had and just get over it. So what did I do, I left with my 2 beautiful headbands and walked into the event in “Diva like” style, and let it go.

I shared this story because many of us find ourselves making choices that will not serve us long term because we rush to make a decision. You wreck budgets, relationships, careers (often our own), friendships and our future because you don’t give yourself the option of just walking away. You may even allow fear to create unrealistic pictures of what will happen if you walk away, and then you get scared, so you make a decision that doesn’t serve you. Similar to my outfit problem, most of the challenges you face won’t be life or death, so don’t allow yourself to make a mountain out of a molehill by getting yourself all worked up over something that will be over in the blink of an eye. Walk away, think about it and then decide, you may even want to give yourself a couple of days.

Today I woke up happy I didn’t purchase that dress, or anything else I didn’t really want or need. No one cared about my outfit. I went to a great event the Hispanic Business Expo, heard a great man whom I greatly respect Ted Rubin speak. I was on-time and learned a lot. My headbands are gorgeous, and I’m glad that I bought them. Not only, will I get a lot of use out of my headbands, they will also be a quiet reminder to me whenever I look at them of that great choice I made on a hot day in July.