Don't Be a Flat Squirrel

I’ve met a lot of “flat squirrels” in life — people paralyzed by indecision, waiting for the perfect time, the perfect plan, the perfect certainty that never comes.

No one ever finds it.

Why We Freeze

We fear being wrong.
We fear being judged.
We fear the unknown.

So we hesitate. We wait. And sometimes, we get stuck. Not because we lack options, but because we lack courage.

The irony is that the longer you wait to decide, the more life decides for you.

The Lesson I Want My Kids to Know

Don’t be afraid to decide.

I’ve made plenty of wrong decisions and failed more times than I can count. But every single one of those failures moved me forward. Playing it safe never did.

You’ll always have people in your corner who love you.

So what do you really have to lose by being bold?

A Framework for Decisions

As a young officer heading into the Army, I borrowed a framework from Pete Blaber’s book The Mission, The Men, and Me. It became my mental model for making decisions under pressure — and it’s served me well ever since.

1. Saturate. Gather all the facts. Learn everything you can.

2. Incubate. Step back. Think. Sleep on it.

3. Illuminate. Let clarity come, and then act decisively.

Simple, but powerful. It keeps emotion from hijacking your judgment and helps you build confidence through discipline.

The Bottom Line

The world rewards decisive people — not because they’re always right, but because they’re always moving.

You can correct a bad decision. You can’t fix standing still.

So don’t be a flat squirrel.

Gather what you know, trust your instincts, and move with faith.

The road belongs to those who move forward.

Don’t settle. Be relentless.
— Hunter