Making Good Decisions: A foolproof system
Knowing how to make good decisions is one of the most important skills you can develop. And since most people make decisions without a proper decision-making process, you'll be an outlier if you learn how to make choices using a system.
This article is the first of a long series about decision-making and goal setting, so if you find this post valuable, bookmark it and visit us whenever you want to get ahead in life and the lifestyle business.
But first off, let me introduce myself. If you already know me, though, keep going!
My Story
My name is Deniero, and I started selling marketing solutions as a Google Premier Partner in 2012. In 2015 I worked on a partnership with Shopify (the e-commerce giant), and I built two e-commerce brands on Amazon right after. In 2017 I opened a digital marketing agency and helped my clients generate millions in sales through branding, public relations, influencer marketing, and product placement. Get benefits from remote work.
In 2018, I launched a podcast, and a coaching program that allowed me to help entrepreneurs in over 50 niches. I get invited regularly to speak at government-funded business events, and I often have the pleasure of networking with and interviewing best-selling authors and 9-figure entrepreneurs.
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Values
I'm telling you this because just a few years ago, I was a broke salesperson with high levels of anxiety and no actual plans to turn my life around. So, how did I go from that stage in my life to being a happy, financially free lifestyle entrepreneur?
The one-word answer is... Values.
If you look up the word value in the dictionary, one of the definitions is "principles or standards of behavior; one's judgment of what is important in life."
The cool thing about values is that even though they evolve throughout your life (i.e., What you value as a teenager is different from what you value as an adult), they're very stable in the short and medium term.
So, for example, if you just had a baby and value spending lots of quality time with your family, you probably won't have FOMO if your friends invite you to an after-hour. Of course, you don't actually tell your friends, "Sorry, at this point in my life, I value my child more than you," but your brain automatically weighs the pros and cons, so you don't need to ponder over such decisions... How easy is that?
But the issue is that most people don't spell out their values. So if you don't know what they are, you are bound to make multiple choices every hour. From the food you eat to the amount of time you spend on social media and the people you hang out with, you're constantly weighing pros and cons and calling shots on the fly.
The issue with that is that our moods and energy levels fluctuate over the day, so if you let your emotional mind decide what you want, over time, you'll end up with wildly different choices. Those scattered results keep you bouncing back and forth instead of building momentum in the right direction, and that's why you feel stuck.
So, instead of defaulting to using your Wants as a parameter to make decisions, start using your Values.
Using Values in decision making: Real-Life Examples
Let's see how this could play out in both scenarios. To show you how a mind with no clear values works, let's pretend that you want to lose 20 pounds and decide to go to the gym four days a week to do cardio.
The first week you are crushing it, but by the second week, while you're about to finish the workout, you're already thinking to yourself, "Is it essential to go four times a week?... I'm working out so hard when I'm here. I think that three times are plenty already."
See, in the scenario above, you're not lazy. You just let your mind decide at the wrong time while using the incorrect parameters! You just asked your exhausted, out-of-breath self if she wanted to do more strenuous physical activity.
Instead, if you took the time to spell out your values, this is how it could have played out.
a) I'm always out of breath, and I can't sleep well; therefore, at this point in my life, I value physical activity more than comfort.
b) I'm tired of not getting what I want in life; therefore, from now on, I value commitment over instant gratification.
If you decided to go four times a week, it's because you made a precise assessment of where you were and where you wanted to be. There was no need to reassess your decision at the end of the second week.
This is the single most common mistake that entrepreneurs and employees (everyone, really...) make. You commit to something, and then you revisit the choice, hence voiding the commitment altogether.
Whether you want to lose weight, scale a business, or be a better husband, mother, or father, you must stick to your commitments, even when it feels uncomfortable.
The beauty of values is that they act like valves throughout your decision-making process. Some choices will perfectly align with your values, while others will clash.
But everyday decisions are not always as straightforward. So to show you how you can approach those, let me take an excerpt from my new book.
Excerpt From the book
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First, realize that you can have different sets of values for different applications.
For example, you can have values for your work and a set of values for how to be a parent. So take a look at what area you struggle with the most at making decisions and list out all the values that apply to it.
Now that you have these lists, you can use them the same way we discussed [above.] But, this time, [l]et's say that a relative you haven't seen in a while tells you that she's going to be in town on Monday and they invite you to a pub at 9 pm.
Now let's look at three sets of values that are relevant to the choice.
Work values: focus, consistency, being on time.
Personal values: Sobriety, eating healthy, sleeping well.
Family values: Love, support, connection.
With this information, you can quickly come up with an answer that makes everyone happy. You can still meet Aunt Susy. But you can ask her to meet you a bit earlier for a coffee, or you can stop by right at 9 to say hi, drink tonic water, and leave. If your bedtime is set in stone at 9 pm and she can't meet you before that, then you can decline the invitation and try to reach out to her in the near future.
Or what if you need to hire a web developer and you are down to two candidates? The first charges less, but they only communicate through a messaging app, whereas the other is more expensive, but they plan on doing a screen share call twice a week to get feedback and show the progress. If your values are speed and good quality relationships, instead of cutting costs, at this stage in your business, the choice is obvious.
No matter what decision you make, if you arrive at it with clear values, you won't feel bad about making it because none of the alternatives make more sense.
But, before you start making better decisions, there are three critical reflections to make
There's a big difference between making decisions confidently and loving every decision you make. You're bound to compromise more often than not, so it's a matter of knowing what to compromise on.
Your values will change over time, so don't feel weird if you don't end up making the same decisions twice. What you wanted for yourself when you were a college student may be different from what you want now.
Making decisions that don't align with your values doesn't feel right. So if you still find yourself second-guessing your decisions, you may have been using someone else's values and thought they were yours.
Values are like valves that can either let an idea through or stop it. You can line up many valves in the system, and each valve can be completely open (it fully aligns with the idea), completely closed (it totally clashes with the idea), or half-open (could align with the idea but needs a compromise)
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