As a professional psychologist, I can help you with this.
How to make up your mind about something?
Let's start with what gets in the way of making up our mind about something.
Usually it's because we've just created some kind of pressure. Some kind of
expectation that we have to get it right. And so,
our fear of getting it wrong has us not making a decision at all. Let's see
if we can loosen up some of that pressure today.
And to do that, I'm going to one of my friends. Brett Harward
is the author of the 5 laws that determine
all of life's outcomes. That's a bold title Brett.
But I think you really nailed something down here.
Brett talks about the law of frequency. And my understanding of that comes from
an example that Brett shared with me. If you can imagine having a nice little
paper bag like this. And let's just pretend
that we fill that paper bag with 20 of these.
We've got 20 of those in there now. And then we also
add 15 of these. Notice these are getting more
valuable. There's fewer of them. There's only 15,
there's 20 of the ones. But we're going to put in 15 of those.
And then we're going to add 10 of these. Is this getting even more
exciting? We'll put 10 of those in. And then we're
going to add 5 of these.
You're liking this game, aren't you? And we're only going to put in
one of these. Now, which one do you want? If I were to
give you a chance to reach into this bag and pull out whatever comes out, what are
the chances that you're going to get what you want?
Maybe not very good. Because there's more of what you don't really want in there.
And there's only one of what you really do want.
So, you reach in and you shuffle around and you find
something and you pull it out. Oh, that's what I thought.
I was going to get a one. Now, what if at this point you have an opportunity
to keep what you've got or to put it back
in and try again. What would you do? Well, with this, of
course you're going to put it back in and you're going to try again, right?
Okay. So, you try again and what's going to happen?
I don't know. You might draw out one of these.
Wow, that looks better, doesn't it? What if you had drawn that out the first
time and I gave you the same choice. You can put it back
and try again or you can keep what you got. What would you do?
This is where most people have a dilemma. If they draw out the 10 or the 20 or the
50, it's really tempting to say, "Okay, well
I'll stay with that." Brett's point was that the only way to
win this game is to keep drawing. Reach in again.
Oh, there it is, okay? You might have to reach in
50 times. Nope, not it. Not it, not it, not it ,not it. There it is.
And when you finally get what it is that you're looking for,
you won, right? What does that have to do with making a decision?
Making up your mind about something. What if we just take off the pressure?
You don't have to get it right this time. Would you be more willing to reach your
hand in there and play? And if you don't get what you want, guess
what? Game's not over yet. Try again.
Choose again. Make up your mind again. Another one of my friends is Eric Dodge.
Eric, if you're watching, thank you for the good you're doing in this world.
Eric is a fabulous musician. He sings country music and he's got some
really awesome messages in his songs. I remember when I interviewed
Eric on my show (Live On Purpose Radio), he said something that was so profound. i
asked him, "Eric, what would you suggest that people
do if they're stuck in a place where
they're kind of paralyzed or they feel depressed or
are stuck in their life?" And Eric's response was profound. He said,
"Man, try some stuff."
Really? That's it? Try some stuff? He's like, "Yeah. Just try some stuff."
I love that mentality. What if we could shift from the
pass fail mentality into experimental mode where we're simply
trying some stuff, as Eric said. It's not that you're going
to fail. It's not that you have to pass.
We're simply experimenting. We're trying some stuff. I'm giving props to my
friends today. And another one is Kim Giles. Kim, I think would agree with
what we just talked about shifting from pass fail into experiment mode.
In her book Choosing Clarity, right here inside of the
the lenses of the glasses there's a little subtitle that says,
"Life is a classroom. Not a test." That's exactly the same idea. We're
shifting from pass-fail to experiment mode we're also
shifting from examination into learning.
You don't have to pass the exam. You're simply learning something.
You know, when we think about it that way, it just takes off the pressure.
It gives us the psychological freedom to actually make up our mind
because we're simply trying some stuff. We're in a classroom, not a test. That
takes the pressure off. And then going back to Brett's idea
about the law of frequency and this bag that's got something in it
that you want, you're probably not going to pull it out
the first time, that's not a problem. Try again. Try again. You're not done yet.
Make up your mind about this and then the next thing will present itself.
In just listening to this, you maybe had some ideas about what
you want to make up your mind about and you don't have to do this alone.
We have so many supports and resources available to you.
Come on over to live on purpose central. We've got
lots of resources there to help you make up your mind about life's most
important things. Go.liveonpurposecentral.com.