How to Persist and Press on When Things Aren’t Working Out for You

Life is filled with ups and downs. And if you are on a journey to achieving the success that you want, there is no doubt you will face some setbacks, challenges, and have to go through tough times. The difference between someone successful and someone who is not is what they do when things are not working out.

Successful people choose to persist, press on, and they continue to pursue what they want. Conversely, the unsuccessful often choose to give up and quit. The saying, “A winner will never quit and a quitter will never win,” is so true. The moment you choose to give up and stop, you lose. “Don’t give up,” is easier said than done.

So what should you do to persist and press ahead when the situations seem bleak? Here are 7 suggestions:

1. Understand that Setbacks Are Necessary

First, you need to understand that setbacks are necessary. There is no way you can be successful without going through some kind of challenges. A lot of people get it wrong to think that failure is the opposite of success. In fact, failure is on the same side of success.

When you are able to persist while the rest have given up, eventually, success can be yours.

You have to understand that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it. When you study the success stories of extraordinary people, you will notice that setbacks, failures, and tough times are part of the game. You just need to treat your bad days as your character-building days.

2. Ignore the Naysayers

Next, ignore the naysayers. People can say whatever they want, and you can’t control what they are going to say. But you can always choose to not listen to them and ignore their words.

When Arnold Schwarzenegger decided that he wanted to be an actor, a lot of people told him that it was impossible for him to make it in the movie industry. Some said that his body was too bulky and some said that his name was too difficult to pronounce.

However, Schwarzenegger pressed on and chose to pursue his acting career. The rest as they say, is history. You don’t have to listen to what everyone has to say, especially those who have never created the results before.

3. Learn from the Successful

It is true that you shouldn’t listen to the naysayers, but what about other successful people? Take advice and learn from them.

When it comes to investing in the stock market, do you want to take advice from your neighbor who has never bought a stock before or do you want to take advice from Warren Buffett? You know the answer. Thus, learn from other successful people. Ask them for advice and seek their help when you need it.

“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.” – Albert Einstein

4. Never Take Your Eyes Off Your Goals

Whenever things are not working out for you, you should focus even more on your goals. You shouldn’t take your eyes off the results and rewards that you want. Like someone once said, “In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure.”

When you focus and keep on thinking about the problems, the setbacks, and the challenges, your fear will grow and stop you from moving forward. Hence, put your focus on your goals.

Always choose to think about the rewards and the results. After all, your goals are the main reason you started the journey in the first place. So when you are in doubt, think about your goals.

5. Remember Your Purpose

Napoleon Hill, the famous author of the classic success book, Think and Grow Rich, wrote in the book, “The starting point of all achievement is desire.” In other words, it is your purpose that propels you into taking action.

When your purpose is weak, your desire will be weak too. You have to understand that what drives you in the first place is your purpose. Therefore, remind yourself of why you want to do it when things are not working out for you. It is your purpose that keeps you going.

Most people give up when the tough time comes because they don’t have a strong enough reason that compels them to move on. When you have a strong and powerful reason to act, you will be committed and never give up no matter what happens.

6. Learn from Your Experience

So what do you need to do when things are not working out? One way to get ahead when everything seems bleak is to learn from your experience. Take time to understand why things are not working out for you. Is it that what you do is wrong? Is your strategy not working? Should you try one more time?

You have to use the feedback that you get and improve your method. Remember, success comes from good judgment. And good judgment comes from experience. But how do you gain experience? From the failures, setbacks, and challenges that you have gone through.

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” – Winston Churchill

7. Take One Small Step

The key to making progress is to always be in action. Whenever you find that things are not working out, you just need to take one more step. Even if it is just a small step, do it. After all, success is the accumulation of small victories that you accomplish day-in and day-out.

Thus, when you are taking action and do just one small thing, you are making progress. More importantly, you are building the momentum you need for the big success that you desire.

You just have to begin. Ask yourself what is the one small thing you can do to move forward to your goal. You will most likely have to try more than once to succeed. It doesn’t matter how slow you go as long as you do not stop.

If you take a sharp ax and swing it at a large tree, eventually, the tree will have to come down no matter how big it is. The key to persist and press on is to keep taking action. Somehow, if you keep moving, you will reach somewhere.

Which one of the above perseverance suggestions resonated with you most and why?

from
https://addicted2success.com/life/how-to-persist-and-press-on-when-things-arent-working-out-for-you/

6 Psychological Forces That Determine Your Success

How do you define success? If asked this question a couple years ago, I would have answered that success means getting a college degree, working a 9-5 job, climbing the corporate ladder, finding a nice wife, and retiring with a white picket fence. Since starting on my self-development journey, however, my definition has changed. Now, I believe that there is only one success and that is to live life on your own terms.

Everyday we are exposed to a multitude of ideas and belief systems through the content we consume and the people we associate with. If you don’t consciously define what success means to you, then you will subconsciously succumb to the definition of society. You’ll climb the ladder towards what you think is success, but once you reach the top you’ll realize that the ladder was leaned up against the wrong wall and you won’t be fulfilled. And success without fulfillment, as Tony Robbins says, is the ultimate failure.

Once you’re clear on your ideal future, execution is where rubber meets the road. Determine the price of your vision and develop the discipline to pay it every single day.

Below are the six psychological forces that determine the extent of your success as well as your ability to sustain taking massive daily action over the long term:

1. Standards

Your standards are what you’re willing to live with. Everything from your financial situation to your body fat percentage is determined by your standards. A major breakthrough is in the realization that we are not the highest version of ourselves that we can imagine but the lowest version of ourselves that we can accept.

Understand that you will do very little to achieve your goals but fight like hell to not breach your standards. Your standards are like a subconscious thermostat that determine what you think you deserve in life. The only way to achieve your goals is to turn them into irrefutable standards.

2. Mindset

Carol Dweck is a researcher and University of Stanford professor that has dedicated her life to figuring out what separates the people that fulfill their potential from the ones that don’t. After decades of research, Dweck’s major finding was that of mindset. More specifically, she found that having a growth versus a fixed mindset determines the extent to which one fulfills their potential.

With a fixed mindset, you believe that your abilities are limited. You believe that the cards you’ve been dealt are the ones you’ll be stuck playing with for the rest of your life. You don’t believe that you can improve and you see challenges as a threat to your sense of self. As such, you are focused on maintaining an image rather than on growth and improvement.

“In a growth mindset, challenges are exciting rather than threatening. So rather than thinking, oh I’m going to reveal my weaknesses, you say, wow, here’s a chance to grow.” – Carol Dweck

With a growth mindset, you believe that your abilities have tremendous room for improvement. You understand that you’ve been dealt a certain set of cards, but you know that the cards will change as you play the game of deliberate practice. You see challenges not as threats, but as opportunities for growth. As such, you are focused on learning and improvement rather than maintaining an image.

The only way to achieve success is by improving yourself and becoming the type of person that deserves it. Shifting from a fixed to a growth mindset is a prerequisite to making any type of considerable progress in your life.

3. Energy

The word energy literally means a capacity for work. And work is the bridge between where you are right now and where you want to be in the future. Your energy level will determine the extent to which you’re able to follow through on your daily actions over the long term.

To achieve and maintain high levels of energy, you must have the fundamentals of eating, moving, and sleeping handled. Moreover, ask yourself what activities drain you of energy and seek to eliminate or reduce them.

4. Skillset

To achieve a certain result, you need to acquire certain skills. Elon Musk tells us that the modern education system is obsolete because it doesn’t equip us with the skills necessary to thrive in a world of exponential technology. Think about what skills will remain relevant in the future and work on developing them every single day. Some skills that I’m working on right now include public speaking, writing, and email marketing.

5. Vision

Making progress is great, but the all important question is: To what end? Having a vision for your end goal allows you to align your efforts with your destination. You could be really good at taking action, but it will be all for nothing if the place you end up isn’t where you want to be.

To gain clarity on your vision, write down your eulogy. Journal on what you would want people to say at your funeral. A lot of us have a fear of death but if we look closely, we can see that death is the veil behind which everything unimportant – external expectations, fear of failure, pride, and vanity – disappears.

“Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.” – Steve Jobs

6. The Mastermind Effect

You already know that you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with, but are you actually living in alignment with that truth? Are your friends people that you admire and respect or are they your friends because that’s the way it’s always been? Have you shared your goals and ambitions with those around you? If not, why not?

These are important questions to answer because your relationships have a profound impact on your future. We subconsciously pick up the habits, beliefs, and thought patterns of those around us. This is known as the mastermind effect. The people you surround yourself with will determine the direction of your destiny. Hang out with five millionaires and you’ll be the sixth.

Whatever success means to you, the essence of it comes down to living life in your own way. Visualize your ideal future, determine the price of it, and develop the discipline to pay that price every single day. Once you get the six psychological forces working for you rather than against you, the road to success will be travelled with far fewer road bumps.

Image courtesy of Twenty20.com

from
https://addicted2success.com/success-advice/6-psychological-forces-that-determine-your-success/

How Corporate Executives Are Building Personal Brands and Why It’s Working

Reality television captivated audiences back in 2009, with shows like Jersey Shore and Mob Wives, it was the golden age of trashy television drama and we couldn’t get enough of it. Fast forward to 2019, entrepreneurs, influencers, and most recently c-level executives, are using those same tactics (minus the trash) to build large followings, and grow their personal brands.

Technology has given every small and large business owner, employee, or student the ability to make a name for themselves across media platforms. It has only been within the last five years, that we have really seen a growth in entrepreneurs hiring a single individual to follow them around with a camera, and create content specifically for their brand.

According to the Bureau Of Labor Statistics, Overall employment of film and video editors and camera operators is projected to grow 13 percent from 2016 to 2026, faster than the average for all occupations. The number of Internet only platforms, such as streaming services, is likely to increase, along with the number of shows produced by these platforms. By now we all know that creating content in the form of word, audio, video and picture is a necessary part of doing business. The phrase “content is king” still rings true. What’s so different then about corporate executives getting in on the action, and why do we love it so much?

Reality television and why we love it so much

Psychology Today reportedly conducted a detailed study of 239 people to find out exactly why Americans seemed to be hooked on reality television. The largest contributing factor between someone just watching a show once, and someone who watched the show religiously, was that they fantasized about being famous, successful, or having large amounts of attention.

Entrepreneurship and business had been a top contender for audience attention as early as 2001 when the reality show Dragon’s Den first started, followed by its successor, Shark Tank in 2009.  The Apprentice, Undercover Boss, The Profit, and Hotel Hell, are just a few others that prove business deals and a successful journey to the top are something people also fantasize about and want for themselves.

Now, we have reality television 2.0. We are able to see real people, running real businesses, operating on a daily basis, in real time. We actively watch startups document each sacrificial moment, each failure, each glorious victory and cheer them on as we witness the birth of another amazing company.

Executives used to be just the faceless individual behind the business, making plans and implementing ideas from the top while the employees on the front lines were the one’s really engaging with the consumer. Today, executives are realizing they are more than just indoor leaders. They have a unique message that is truly embedded in the company culture, and it’s one that consumers love to see.

I interviewed Claude Silver, the Chief Heart Officer of VaynerMedia to talk about her content, values, and vision. As the CHO she oversees anything that involves people such as: recruiting, culture, talent management and employee experience. Her role offers her many opportunities for speaking engagements, HR forum appearances, and genuine blurbs of wisdom, which all contribute to her growing content and following.

She recently started working with Rich Cardona, a retired Marine Corps aviator turned interviewer/video editor, to create content for her personal brand, an overall reflection of VaynerMedia. Rich didn’t have formal education in videography, but he came with leadership development, kindness, true grit and used those skills to teach himself.

Finding and nurturing exceptional talent is something that has given Claude much of her success. When asked why she chose to work with Rich she said “Because I think Rich is untapped talent and he is a veteran, there is so much courage in that, he risked his life for our country and I trust him…I can trust to record my video’s with him.”

VaynerMedia’s Co-founder Gary Vaynerchuk started building his personal brand the exact same way, hiring a videographer named David Rock to document his entrepreneurial journey, which has now spun off into multiple shows like DailyVee and Trash Talk, a show about flipping merchandise for cash.

VaynerMedia isn’t the only company recycling the tactics from reality television. Sue Ellen Watts, founder of an HR company called Wattnexts, documents her business life in a vlog titled The Unconventional Life. So, What can executives, managers and small business owners expect to see if they adopt the same method? See below!

1. Turn your consumers into die-hard fans

When Steve Jobs appeared on stage to launch the first iphone in 2007, he had already created an army of adoring Apple fans that couldn’t wait to buy it. Jobs had built a brand around both the products and himself. Much in the same way that I first consumed Claude Silver’s content to become a fan of her, business owners can expect the same reward if they are consistent and honest about the video’s they share across platforms.

Reality television had drama, today we see it represented through celebrations and failures when a leader is brave enough to share them. Claude Silver recently posted a video of her newborn child on Instagram and fans celebrated along with her. “I had been posting a lot on Facebook, sharing my thoughts on it, and Gary is one of the biggest influencers out there, there’s no better person to take example from, so when I started at VaynerMedia naturally my content increased.” said Silver after being asked why she started documenting.

2. Create an open-door policy with the world

A recent Gallup survey reported that only 41% of employees strongly agree that they know what their company stands for. If more than half of your employees aren’t sure what the company’s values are, how can your customers? By documenting your values and process as a leader, your employees can watch and learn, whether they are in the same office or in another country.

It also gives consumers a chance to offer feedback and make requests on a product or service almost immediately. In the same way, it produces a more positive work culture. If employees can see a leader that keeps their values consistent between their professional and personal life they will be encouraged to do the same.

3. Find talent by reverse engineering

By documenting the daily life of your business, your consumers become fans, and fans share their gratitude by showing you their talents. If your business is looking for the next customer service star, videographer, social media expert or sales rep, there’s no better place to look than within the group of people that are already invested in your mission and already committed to your brand.

They’ll be able to watch what’s happening with the managers, executives and front line workers in real time by watching a vlog or piece of content on social media and understand the culture, even before they step through the door. Reverse the role and top talent will be knocking on your door asking to work with your business.

Taking consumers and fans behind the scenes is an approach we can expect to see continuing to rise in popularity. For executives or owners that have yet to begin documenting, it might be beneficial to note that branding at it’s core means connecting with your target audience on an emotional level.

Hiring a videographer to film ‘a day in the life of’ will create deeper connection, brand longevity and increased revenue if done correctly. No-one wanted to be Angelina on Jersey Shore but everyone wanted to be Pauly D. Keep your content real, relatable and genuine. Rich Cardona said it best “no one cares about the company anymore, everyone cares about the people behind the company.”

from
https://addicted2success.com/success-advice/how-corporate-executives-are-building-personal-brands-and-why-its-working/

5 Beliefs That Make High Performance Individuals Achieve More Than the Rest

Many people believe that high performance people such as Michael Jordan, Elon Musk and Michael Phelps are just blessed with superior genetics. But that simply is not true. The fact is, these individuals have beliefs that they picked up somewhere in their lives that made them the high performance individuals that they are.

A high performer has the ability to achieve much more success and growth than an “ordinary” person. They are individuals who tend to become celebrities and authorities in their respective fields. But these great achievements are not only due to their actions but also due to the beliefs they have that most people do not.

The good news is, these beliefs can be adopted by anyone including you, to help you become a high performance individual regardless of your past performances in your life so far.

Below are 5 beliefs that make high performance individuals achieve more than anyone else:

1. They Love Themselves More Than Anyone

Self love and high self-esteem is a requirement for high performance. If you don’t love yourself enough that you believe in yourself to succeed and believe you deserve to succeed, then you won’t achieve it. If you view yourself as less than others then you’ll find a way to make that a reality.

Low self-esteem makes people afraid of failure which results in them not taking any worthy action. On the other hand, people with high self esteem believe they are worthy of greatness and therefore are not afraid to take the risks associated with it. A high performance person loves themselves more than anyone else loves them. If you don’t believe in yourself first, no one will.

2. They Are Fueled with “Fear”

People who appear fearless simply just accept the pressure and use it as their fuel to perform at their best. Have you ever prepared for a presentation only to feel an intense feeling of anxiety before you go out to present the real thing? Apart from hours of practice under pressure, high performers welcome that fear; they enjoy it. They are almost like adrenaline junkies who use it as their energy.

“The difference between a failure and a high performance individual is how each deals with fear. We are all afraid. A high performance person uses his fear to galvanize his actions.” – Dan Peña

3. They’re Willing to Pay

High performers have the same needs and desires as everyone else. They enjoy a fun time just like the next person but they know they have to make sacrifices to achieve success. The sacrifices you need to make depend on the level of success you want to achieve and the field you’re in. If you’re after the billionaire lifestyle then look at the work ethic and sacrifices a billionaire such as Elon Musk has to make compared to someone earning 6-7 figures on their laptop.

High performers don’t mind working hard now so they can live an easy life that ordinary people can only dream of simply because they didn’t pay the price. High performers are ready to pay the price with sweat, blood and tears.

4. They Don’t Hang

You don’t see high performance people hanging out with their friends every Friday. They don’t meet up every week to go for drinks or go to watch the game. No, that’s what ordinary people do that high achievers do not do.

High performance individuals know that they become the average of the people they surround themselves with. They know that surrounding themselves with people with poor and negative mindsets can negatively impact their performance.

If you’re not already a high performer then you must seek a new circle of friends if you want to see a change in your life. As the saying goes, “show me your friends and I’ll show you your future.”

5. They Are Laser Beam Focused

They are focused on the few not the many. Most people with an entrepreneurial spirit tend to chase every “opportunity” that comes their way. Although these may be great opportunities or methods that get you closer to your goals, trying to do them all at once gets you nowhere. The first time Bill Gates and Warren Buffett met at a dinner party, they were asked what they attributed most of their success to. Both of them summed it up in one word: focus.

“The successful warrior is the average man with laser-like focus.” – Bruce Lee

Although there are many more beliefs a high performance individual have, these are the 5 beliefs that most ordinary people lack that high performers have. The key is to remove any negative beliefs you’ve had and replace them with high performance beliefs in order to develop a powerful mindset. Remember, that half of the game is mental.

So learn to love yourself, fuel your actions with “fear”, be ready to pay the price, surround yourself with the right people and stay focused on achieving your success. Are you hungry for success? If so, how much do you want to achieve in your lifetime? Let us know know below!

Image courtesy of Twenty20.com

from
https://addicted2success.com/success-advice/5-beliefs-that-make-high-performance-individuals-achieve-more-than-the-rest/

The 17 Greatest Lessons I Learned In 2018 That Will Change Your Perspective.

Your Response to Your Level of Success Will Determine Your Happiness

We are looking for ways and means to become more successful; the definition of such is really personal and has nothing to do with fame or fortune. Rather, it revolves around our ability towards being happy. Of course, the implication here is that successful people are happy people. And as long as you do not have a contorted view of success, such as I will step on as many people as I have to get rich, then this implication tends to hold true.

Happiness itself is a very strange word to define. Charles Haanel, in his groundbreaking 1912 work on metaphysical mindset and success entitled, The Master Key System, defines happiness as three separate and distinct entities that must exist to varying degrees within a person’s purview.

They are health, wealth, and love. Haanel suggested that if a person has the three of those entities to the degree of their satisfaction, they are, by definition, happy! Florence Scovel Shinn, in her 1925 publication, The Game of Life, adds a fourth dimension to happiness: Self Expression. She calls the four keys of happiness the “square of life.”

Since happiness and success are inexorably linked as we strive for one, we tend to get more of the other. This collinear relationship can assist us in building additional groundswell and momentum. In other words, when success increases, happiness increases as a result of the increase in success, and as happiness increases, we become more successful as a result of the increase in happiness.

“In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.” – Abraham Lincoln

But the question before us today is how do we react to that increase of success when it occurs? This is a very important question to answer as our life, in this wonderful cause and effect universe, means that an “effect” can become a cause for an entirely new effect. And if we are not careful, what started as a noble endeavor, can lead to ruin. Our mental responses to future increased success and happiness, is truly contingent upon how we react to our current level of success and happiness!

There are two “H” camps that form possible responses to the level of success we are currently enjoying: One “H” camp is hubris; the other is humility. We get to choose our response initially, but eventually it will become habit and the response will become automatic.

If hubris is chosen as an initial response to success, we tend to be overtly proud of our accomplishments and incline to want to tell the world how great we are and that the world should “get in line” and follow our path toward attainment. The focus is off of our accomplishments and is centered on us! We become the focal point instead of what we did! In Greek tragedies, hubris was considered excessive pride in defiance of the gods.

“A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.” – C.S. Lewis

It is easy to fall into this trap of thinking how great we are, because of the hard work and effort we put into our achievements. This is how hubris becomes established as a habit of behavior.

There might be a better path to consider traveling; that of humility. Being humble in the face of your accomplishments tells the world (and more important, yourself; your self-image) that you alone were not responsible for what you accomplished. That you had assistance from your parents (who had you), your teachers (who molded you), your friends (who socialized you), your business associates (who vetted you), and a cadre of others.

Humility gives them thanks for the way they touched you throughout your life. Be careful! Humility is fickle. When you begin to think you have enough humility, you begin to lose some!

Here are a few ideas for developing a healthy dose of humility in your life:

1. Spend a few minutes in quite meditation – If not overt mediation, at least in quiet time where you can start making the connections between your success and the people that assisted you.
2. Spend time thinking about happiness – Happiness is a present condition. If you wait for some future event to occur before you are happy, you are robbing yourself of the chance to be happy NOW.
3. Think about the linkage between a productive existence and a happy life – Are you sacrificing too much now, for some future event? If so, is that sacrifice causing regret, remorse and guilt now? (It’s hard to celebrate your success and be happy now when you are carrying all that emotional baggage.)
4. Begin to practice non-resistance – Don’t be a doormat but learn to bend and let go. Acceptance of what exists is a great start! Try not to argue too much with reality. It has no sense of humor! This will cause happiness to flood into your life. (And remember happiness and success are linked. When you get more of one, you get more of the other!)
5. Be grateful – Show gratitude! Thank whoever it is you believe created the universe for the wonderful opportunity you have to show your skills and talents. And, for what you already have AND for what you will get in the future. In the words of Father Solanus Casey, OFM, “Thank God ahead of time.”

Good luck on your journey. Write me and let me know how you are doing with your success and happiness!

from
https://addicted2success.com/success-advice/your-response-to-your-level-of-success-will-determine-your-happiness/

5 Strategies to Help You Make Winning Decisions

Have you regretted any of the decisions that you’ve made? I’ll take a wild guess here and say “yes.” We all have walked in Remorse-land many times and have made mistakes we would gladly erase if given the chance. So then, if someone comes to you and offers you a time machine to go back and alter some of your not-so-bright choices, you would take it, right?

Of course, this all makes for an enticing plot of a Hollywood blockbuster, but in reality, such kind of magic doesn’t exist. How about then if you are given the next best alternative, the tools to make better decisions from the outset, rather than living with regrets and wishing to have the power to bend time?

Here are five strategies which will help you become better at picking the winning option:

1. See the future you

In his widely-popular research, Hal Hershfield, a UCLA associate professor who has studied for years how people can make better long-term decisions, asked participants to envision themselves in 10 years. fMRIs detecting brain activity showed that we think about our older selves the same way we do about complete strangers.

But when part-takers were shown computer-altered pictures of themselves looking near retirements age, things changed— they allocated twice as much money to their retirement fund vs. buying something new today.

The rather salient takeaway here is that, to make better decisions, we must imagine how they will impact our future selves. If you believe a choice will help you get you closer to the future happy and successful you, then, by all means, take it. But if you are unsure, better have another think.

2. Expand your pool of options

An excellent piece in the NYTimes describes a study by Paul Nutt—a Professor of Management at Ohio State University, who, in the early 1980s carried out a study among senior managers at public and private companies in the U.S. and Canada on how they made decisions. He found out that half of the decisions in companies failed because people tended to take shortcuts and didn’t spend sufficient time looking for alternatives and evaluating them (only 29% did so).

And this can cost us. According to other research, when we ignore assessing other options, our chances for success are about 50 %, while decisions involving at least 2 choices lead to a favorable outcome in 2 out of 3 cases.

To come up with some quality ideas, in addition to expanding the size of our canvas, we should involve other people in our brainstorming endeavor, draft a list of the choices and assign weights to each. The highest score wins.

These approaches will enhance our decision-making skills, which, in turn, will give us a shot at something much bigger; a chance to reach our goals, be happier and have a more fulfilling future.

“Panic causes tunnel vision. Calm acceptance of danger allows us to more easily assess the situation and see the options.” – Simon Sinek

3. Limit your pool of information

Yes, this idea goes directly against the above point and sounds counterintuitive, but if you get to think about it—it does make sense. Studies from Princeton and Stanford Universities, have revealed that when we immerse ourselves in a sea of information, we may end up pursuing non-instrumental data, which we then use to make decisions.

Naturally, the quality of that outcome will be questionable. Sometimes, we may end up with a choice that we wouldn’t have made altogether (and possibly regret it later on) if we didn’t rely on this irrelevant information.

How do we end up in such a position? It’s driven by our aversion to uncertainty. Simply put, our brains hate volatility and try to resolve it any way they can. One way is by seeking any information that seems like a good candidate and hastily pick it.

Phew, problem solved! Move on. But, as research tells us, seeking out more details do help make a decision, but it may not necessarily be a good one.

4. Take a page from Darwin and Franklin

When Malcolm Gladwell published his book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking in 2005, the world was fascinated by the idea that we can make complex decisions with very little effort—just by trusting our gut instinct and by ‘snapping it.’ That is, the book offers some research to support the idea that quick solutions based on intuition can yield surprisingly successful outcomes.

Sounds great but many subsequent studies don’t quite support this. What’s more, sticking to the “old school” ways of making decisions such as conscious thinking and evaluation of alternatives, can lead to more high-quality results.

Just take a note from Darwin who used the pros-and-cons list to make the most important decision of his life—whether to marry. Ben Franklin, similarly, always used this same “simple” method when confronted with challenging choices. Sometimes, the conventional non-fancy ways to make decisions happen to be the best options.

“Warren Buffett told me once and he said always follow your gut. When you have that gut feeling you have to go with, don’t go back on it.” – LeBron James

5. Kill the Company

“Kill the Company” is a best-selling book by Lisa Bodell—the CEO of a consulting company which helps businesses embrace change and innovation. The basic premise of the exercise is that executives are asked to brainstorm all of the ways in which their company can go down. Then, packed with this insight, they work backwards to try and remedy the loopholes in their processes, strategies and choices.

The idea has proven very effective and easy to practice. Just imagine that a decision you pick today turns out to be a complete failure in the future. What will you do to ensure a better outcome?

In the end, our decisions are the foundations of the future lives we build for ourselves, as they have the power to directly affect our success trajectories. While taking the wrong turn may not always have catastrophic consequences, we are also rarely given a do-over in life.

And why is it so vital that we keep honing our choice-making skills, you may ask? It’s very simple—YOLO.

Which one of these strategies to make winning decisions resonated most with you and why?

from
https://addicted2success.com/life/5-strategies-to-help-you-make-winning-decisions/