I have been looking at evidence of crisis building and thinking about the things we are doing about it. What I see is a lot of half-steps and half-measures.

Which pretty much jibes with my own experiences. What does it take for someone to make a decisive action?

Nowhere in Africa
A few years ago I saw a movie that really stuck with me. It was a bout a Jewish family in Germany during the 1930's.

The Nazi party was gaining popularity and war was in the air. Things looks grim but people kept saying it would blow over. Hitler would get voted out of office. Honest people wouldn't let him get too powerful.

One guy was convinced that things would get much worse. His friends and family told him he was crazy, he was worrying too much.

But he took his wife and daughter to Africa. To the middle of freaking no where. He took a crazy risk. He made a decisive change. And he saved their lives by doing so.

Dotcom crash
Fast forward to the dotcom crash and 2001. I was living alone in a 2 bedroom condo in San Francisco. I had a huge mortgage and no job.

Decisive action would have been (a) get a roommate, (b) move into a cheap apartment and rent out my condo, (c) move out of SF.

But I did not do any of those things. I did a half-measure. I did nothing. I charged up credit cards to pay my bills and I just hoped the whole thing would blow over.

It took me a year to find a job and the job forced me to move out of SF anyway. I eventually did a decisive act but only because someone else forced me and only after I had a huge amount of debt. As I spent the next few years, paying off that debt, I kept wishing I had been stronger when it would have counted.

I often think about these two experiences. They apply not just to my own life to but those around me.

A bad marriage but not willing to divorce. An expensive home but not willing to downsize or live in an apartment. A bad job but not willing to quit. Out of work but not willing to move.

Our lives are filled with decisions, with opportunities to be decisive or to take a half-step.

Decisive moves are hard. They usually go against what we want, against what our friends tell us to do, and they usually have unpredictable results. They require personal strength and a leap of faith.

Which surely explains why so few of us make them. We stick to the half-steps and half-measures. We stick with what we know even if its bad for us or makes us unhappy.

And it is not just individuals. When I look at our national financial crises or the many company bankruptcies, I see the same patterns. Take a leap with a decisive action or waste time with a half-step. Japan is now famous for a decade of half-steps. Maybe we will be next.

I have tremendous respect for people that are willing to take decisive actions in their own lives. I wish I was crazy enough to do it more often. Fortune rewards the bold.