We make decisions every day. What to wear. Who to ask for help. Which project to take on at work. Making a decision is easy — usually.

Unless it forces you to change the way you live your life.

As a species, we are averse to big change. Ever notice how long it takes for great ideas to catch on? Change is hard because it involves unknown elements. And let’s face it, we’re all afraid of the unknown.

It may seem strange that two amateur bartenders with no 9-5 work experience, no understanding of importing, and no Spanish skills have made the decision to start a business out of Central America. There are a million unknown elements in this project. We could fill up a hard-drive with all of the things we don’t know about this new venture.

But there’s one thing we do know. We analyzed the opportunity. Asked ourselves if it was worth the risk. And then made a decision to say yes.

It wasn’t instantaneous. We tossed around questions for a month. Do we want to travel? Support American-made? Be organic? Work in a foreign country? Sell products online?

Ultimately, these are the steps we took to really make our decision. It’s an introspective process. It takes time. But even in a few months, the reward has given us progress, meaning, and purpose. Change is scary, but stagnation and boredom are even scarier.

• Know what you want out of life. Review the past year.  We suggest reading Chris Guillebeau’s post about conducting an annual review. Analyze your life and the past 12 months. Figure out what went well and what didn’t. Ask yourself why, and figure out what you need to change. Make goals concerning family, career, and personal growth. Figure out how you’re going to achieve each goal. This is a great way to figure out what you want, what you don’t want, and how to make good things happen.

• Know what you want out of your business venture. Make a list of the things you’d like to get out of your new career. Time off? Location independence? Built-in travel? A new skill set? The ability to help others?

• Define success in your own terms. Will you be happy with a meaningful project that doesn’t make you rich? Do you want to realize a childhood dream? Do you want to start a scalable enterprise? Or is your goal to be independent from a boss?

• Evaluate your options.* List your business ideas. You’ve probably got a million running through your head. We definitely did. We’d write down each one with some informal pros and cons and mentally file them away. The best will rise to the top.

• Combine your life goals, business goals, and need for success to choose the business opportunities that allow you to live the life you want. It will take a while to evaluate every aspect of your future. Shannon and I are still figuring out the kinks in our plan. It takes a lot of planning to achieve each personal and business goal we’ve set. The only definitive, absolute knowledge we have is this: it is possible. With a little ingenuity, there’s no reason we can’t have it all.

* A note on evaluating business options — Don’t rule out opportunities for the following reasons: lack of money, time or fear of hardships. Business opportunities are inherently lofty — if starting a business isn’t challenging, then it probably isn’t a good business. Shannon and I don’t know anything about importing products from Latin America, nor do we have enough money to support the project. However, our business plan makes sense with our lifestyle and business goals. We just have to remind ourselves: with great risk comes great reward.

Here is a one-page template that I find helpful for moving through these steps.  Feel free to use it and pass it on. {r}