Suzy Welch: How to make a difficult decision

One evening when Gwen returned from yet another long stretch on the road, however, her nanny put her ­fifteen-month-old son in her arms and he ­didn’t recognize her, shoving her away with an angry squeal. Gwen was shaken to her core. Her husband, looking on, was too.

Overwhelmed by a growing sense of guilt, Gwen soon resigned. “I’ll be back in a few months,” she promised her boss, “just as soon as things get back to normal at home.”

But weeks passed, then months, and bit by bit, Gwen found herself ever more entrenched in the “back to normal” she was trying to build, her days busy with driving the kids to lessons, friends’ houses, and various and sundry appointments, her nights taken over by dinner, homework, baths, and story time. Her office off the family’s garage, piled with the industry trade magazines she vowed to keep reading, began to fill up with skate sharpeners and costumes for the school play.

After a year at home, Gwen’s heart started to fill too — not with sadness, but with a vague, persistent longing for the big career that could have been. Occasionally, she would reread an email from her old boss she ­couldn’t bring herself to delete from her inbox. “­We’ll take you back whenever you want,” it said. “Your old team needs you and misses you.”

Video   Suzy Welch answers your questions April 14: Suzy Welch, author of “10-10-10: A Life-Transforming Idea,” answers viewer questions about her unique approach to mastering life’s dilemmas. Today show

Gwen missed them too, but how much? Weeks passed with her mind seesawing in debate. Had she really chosen stay-at-home motherhood, she wondered, or had she fallen into it by not choosing otherwise?

In the middle of this quandary, Gwen’s sister mentioned 10-10-10 to her, suggesting she might use it the next time she felt stuck.

That happened a few days later. “I was cleaning the refrigerator, my hands and face covered with cold water and detergent, everything melting all over the place, and Sammy was crying his head off. I just lost it,” Gwen told me. “For once and for all, I needed to decide if I should keep being a full-time mom.”

Gwen soothed Sammy and put him down for a nap, finished with the refrigerator, and poured herself a cup of coffee. Then, with an hour to spare before her daughter arrived home from school, she sat in her kitchen and started to 10-10-10.

Her very first emotion, as the process unfolded, was dread. “Short term, if I stayed home, I knew I was looking at a lot of diapers and spit-up, with my brain not really in high gear,” she told me. “I was looking at a bit of boredom, and a lot of wondering about what might have been.” As for the long-term, ten-year scenario, “I knew the kids would basically be on their way out the door by that time,” Gwen said. “They would be gone, and so would my career.”

But a different kind of revelation began to emerge as Gwen considered the ten-month scenario. “Suddenly, as I sat there thinking about it, I became conscious of how much I cared about the time in between the first and last 10s,” she said. “When Sammy makes his first goal, Emma has her first flute recital, and Alex learns to shave, I’ll be there. I realized I was giving up one dream, but I was getting a reality I ­couldn’t walk away from in return.”

Another mother might have landed at a different conclusion that day in the kitchen, but for Gwen, 10-10-10 crystallized her priorities. Her decision ­didn’t mean she would jump for joy every time the baby cried; it ­didn’t mean that she would delight in the hours spent waiting for ice hockey practice to end. It simply meant she had made a values-driven choice that she could — and wanted to — live by.

The tough stuff
No wonder Gwen was smiling when she first tracked me down. Her ambivalence was gone — and in its place, the peace of mind that comes with intentionality. But for the sake of full disclosure, you need to know right here and now that every 10-10-10 process ­doesn’t end so neatly. Sometimes the solution you arrive at will be an outright surprise, as the process can surface values, agendas, fears, and dreams ­you’ve never confronted before, or it can send you down paths ­you’ve long avoided in order to keep your world under control. Some 10-10-10 solutions can even be deeply challenging, as they “require” you to come clean with others about what you truly believe and how you want to live. The truth is, transformation ­doesn’t always come easily.

About a year ago, I gave a speech about 10-10-10 on a college campus. Afterward, one student lingered, waiting to see me alone.

He was, it turned out, an aspiring entrepreneur from Romania named Razvan, who wanted to launch a mobile phone company back home. The problem, he quickly told me, was that his longtime girlfriend, a waitress waiting for him in Bucharest, wanted to launch it with him. “What happens when Mihaela makes a mistake with a contract or something? She’s not very tough when it comes to money; her family was all Communist,” he reported matter-of-factly. “Then I have to say, ‘Mihaela, ­we’re trying to make a profit here,’ and she starts yelling, ‘Profit, forget profit — what about ideals?’ And we have a fight, like always. You know what I mean?”

Video   How tough choices impact happiness April 14: Should you stay late at work, or go to your child’s recital? Suzy Welch is talking to TODAY’s Matt Lauer about her new book, “10-10-10: A Life-Transforming Idea,” which tackles ways to make these tough choices. Today show

I got the picture, at least enough to get started. I gestured for Razvan to step closer, so we could conduct a 10-10-10 together about whether he should work with Mihaela on his new business venture.

In ten minutes, a “yes” answer was enormously appealing, Razvan said eagerly. Mihaela would calm down and, at least for a while, throw her best energies into the project. A “no” answer would cause, in Razvan’s words, “World War Three,” as Mihaela’s family and his own — they were close friends — were sure to get involved and lobby him to change his mind.

The ten-month picture was less mixed; it would be grim no matter which choice was made. If they worked together, Razvan said, he and Mihaela would likely be back to their quarreling. But apart, there would be misery too: “­We’ve been together for many years and there is love between us,” he reflected wistfully.

We turned to the ten-year picture, and right away Razvan grimaced as if he was seeing a photograph that disturbed him. If he asked Mihaela to join his venture, they would surely be married by then, an outcome guaranteeing, as he put it, “a life of daily battles.”

“Because your hopes and dreams are fundamentally different?” I asked.

“Because all we really have is history,” he replied. “And I know that’s not enough. We will spend our lives hurting each other.”

With that, Razvan’s 10-10-10 decision was made.

Was he happy? Of course not. Indeed, as we parted, I could see tears welling in his eyes. But I could also tell he was relieved in some measure, and resolved too, about taking control of his life and his future. Happiness, he seemed to know, awaited him. Sometimes, that is all 10-10-10 can promise.

From “10-10-10” by Suzy Welch. Copyright © 2009 by Suzy Welch. Reprinted by permission of Scribner, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., NY. Learn more about Suzy and her book by visiting her Web site: www.suzywelch101010.com/

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