Your current position in life is due to one thing.
But before telling you what it is let me tell you what it’s not.
It’s not where you come from.
Not your race.
Not the color of your skin
Not your religion.
Not your college degree or even “who’s your father”.
Of course, all these factors are influential, but since we’ve got, pretty much, no influence on them, let’s discard them and stick to what’s possible to act on.
Your life today is simply the total sum of the decisions you’ve taken so far.
Hence decision-making is arguably the most crucial skill to master.
Ironically, like most real-life skills, this is not taught in school (or maybe I missed that
class)…
Anyways…
In this article, I share a simplistic example of how most people make their decisions. And I also share how to ensure you make the best decisions in a given situation.
I got on the scale and the number was a real shocker
Two weeks ago, I randomly stepped on the scale before showering. And the number I saw gave me goosebumps…
… it wasn’t a world record in terms of being overweight, but it was my personal lifetime record.
I literally never been any heavier. So I decided on the spot to start making some changes: Started running for 30-40 minutes, 3 times a week. Divorced junk food. And I even got a home bike (so I don’t get lazy when winter shows up).
I managed to keep on track for 10 days.
But on the 11th day of this radically different lifestyle, the temptation to eat a mouth-watering burger started to kick in.
To be honest, I couldn’t resist the urge. I fired up the Uber Eats app, start ordering, got to the checkout, and then I thought “wait a sec’, what are the implications of this?”
A 1-minute thought made me instantly cancel the order and go cook some peppers and eggs.
How the vast majority of people make decisions
See, when I felt that urge to order, and actually started ordering I was making a decision from a first-order thinking level.
This is basically thinking in terms of instant gratification: if I got the burger I’d be thrilled to devour it, and it would largely satisfy my hunger.
This pattern of thinking is how the vast majority of people rule their lives. They make decisions based on the gratification that follows right after the thing they decided to do (or not to do)
So if most people think like this, how does the minority of successful folks make decisions…
How successful people make decisions
What made me cancel the order was simply up-leveling my order thinking.
In other words, instead of thinking about the immediate, instant implication of eating the burger (1st order thinking), I took it to the next level.
What would happen AFTER those perceived benefits are gone?
Well, nothing good.
That damn burger would contribute to extra weight. It’ll delay my weight loss goals and it’ll break the habit of eating healthy that I got into the implication at his level in my opinion)
The above are some of the consequences of 1st order thinking, of that, seemingly harmless, burger-eating decision.
But let’s take one level further, shall we?
Eating that burger would hurt my self-confidence.
Because now I showed myself that I can’t stick to one path.
Actually,1 decided to get in shape and eat healthy and now I broke that decision. This would, in turn, replicate in other areas of life: starting a new business venture, starting a new relationship, a new hobby…etc
Because how we do one thing is how we do everything.
Basically, that apparently little tiny decision could become a pattern that would compromise any new endeavor I embark on.
Conclusion
As you can see applying 2nd and 3rd level thinking to that burger-eating decision is what made me cancel the order
The consequences of those levels were simply disastrous. And the upside dopamine rush I’d get from that meal wasn’t worth it after all.
Of course, some decision has way more significance than a “burger”.
However, even the latter can have dangerously underrated implications.
Therefore I encourage you to always think in terms of 2nd and 3rd level implications.
Some people (let’s call them geniuses) operate in the 4th and 5th order of thinking.
But for most of us, that’s not necessary.
Especially if today you’re making decisions from a 1st level order thinking