Do You Make Long Term Decisions Based on Long Term Emotions?
Do you?
Goal: To talk about how we can make better decisions
I love the picture above. The model does a great job of expressing emotions.
What I don’t like about the picture is that the model exaggerates the emotions. For most of us the emotions are more subdued than extreme.
Even though our emotions are subdued it does not mean that they do not drive our behavior. They most certainly do.
Take for example buying an online course. As a creator of courses, I can control the content, quality and delivery. I can not control, at least I do not know how, whether people buy or not.
Often times people are interested in things BUT it takes emotion(s) to pull the trigger and become committed to a thing. And it might be different emotions from one person to another.
I might get angry and say I got to buy this course in order to get X done. Someone might say that they feel the need to learn the topic in order to transform their life. Others might say they need the accountability of the class to get through the material.
All different emotions and different drivers to purchase the course. BUT all of them are based on emotions. It is not our lizard survival brain BUT our middle brain that makes the decision. Maybe with a little help of the logical part to convince ourselves that the emotion is real and we need to make that purchase.
There are quite a few people trying to pull our strings to get us to buy. Personally I have stayed away from that game.
After failing a bunch of times, I believe that market research is important in order to understand what your client needs and the words they use to describe their need. BUT after you know that information, you better make sure your product satisfies those needs and will satisfy the customer.
I believe that momentary emotions are intended to keep us safe. Using those momentary impulses to make long term life altering decisions is dangerous. The emotions are like elephant but our logic brain is the rider on top of that elephant. The rider better control the direction or the elephant will go where it wants to.
How?
Baby elephants are tied to a post with a very strong rope. After a while they learn that they can not break the rope and submit to being held in place. Eventually the rope gets smaller and smaller and the elephant does not fight it.
For humans, we create our own bonds that hold us in place. We try to control our emotions but once in a while the rope drops to the ground and elephant just goes off.
To be a better decision maker one has to realize that the emotions drive us BUT we have a logical brain that needs to help control them. We also need to realize that the logical brain fails us at times and we make a poor decision. So what must happen is that we have to strengthen our logical brain.
How?
By training yourself to make great decisions on smaller decisions. This is the training that we must fine tune on order to become capable to make bigger decisions without the emotions getting in the way. So start small and build those decision muscles while realizing that the emotions will at times bias our choice.
One last thing I would add is that setting the path is the key for any change effort. I wrote an article about it recently (Do you Understand the Benefit of Setting the Path for Your Team?). If you can figure out the first few small decisions that you should make while on the way to the big decision, that will set you up for success. When you identify those first few small decisions and not worry about the big one just yet you will be better able to control those
My seven cents….(this is what I earned from Medium.com for Nov. 2020)
I got to go…my future self alarm went off
Robert Trajkovski is professional with experience in leading people and projects in Steel/ Power, Refining, Chemicals, Industrial Gasses, Software, Consulting and Academia. He has worked for both owners and engineering companies. In addition, he has instructed 73+ courses at several institutions and often offers his courses for free on LinkedIn.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/roberttrajkovski/
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