How to Make Great Decisions – By Paul Dalton

By Paul Dalton

How many times in your life have you put off doing something because you couldn’t decide the best course of action to take? I’ve known people plan to go out for a well earned meal with their partner and end up staying at home because they couldn’t make up their mind between Chinese or Italian. Heaven help the person who orders sweet and sour chicken when all along they should have been having lasagna! Can you imagine what it is like for them to choose between a staying in their job or take a gamble on starting that business they always dreamed of?

The fear of making bad decisions prevents people from doing all kinds of things that they might be better off doing. The truth of the matter is there is no way of knowing which direction a particular choice is going to take you. You can spend years ruminating over every possible outcome while in the mean time watching the world move on around you. It doesn’t change the fact that, no matter what you choose to do in the end, it might all turn out right and it might all turn out not so right.

But none of that matters because the secret to making great decisions is falling in love with making mistakes.

A lot of people will not make the distinction between making a mistake and making a bad decision, but there is a world of difference, and realizing what that difference is can literally turn your life around and set you on a whole new path.

A mistake is literally doing something in a moment that you think is for the best but later turns out to be not such a good idea for you. A bad decision is doing nothing to correct that mistake and then letting the consequences of it define you for ages afterwards.

Here are a few of examples:

Mistake = Getting into a relationship with the wrong person.
Bad Decision = Sticking with them and being miserable for the rest of your life

Mistake = Choosing Bognor Regis rather than Cuba for your annual holiday.
Bad Decision = Looking for everything you can find to hate about Bognor just to prove you were right about how you should have gone to Cuba! And then going back to Bognor next year! (Bognor is a wonderful place by the way).

Mistake = Going into business without having some sort of a plan.
Bad Decision = Injecting more and more of your personal finance, sweat and tears into it just to prove you can make the damn thing work.

Making a good decision is not about knowing the outcome before it has had a chance to happen. It is about committing to ANY course of action you FEEL is for the best and then paying attention to the lessons you are later presented with. It is the skill of interpreting the information generated by what has happened and choosing to either do more of the same or change your approach — even start again in some cases. In the same way that an airplane reaches its destination by continually measuring how off track it is from the set flight path and adjusting its course to get back on track, the same is true for good decision making.

Making a decision in any area is not a one time event; it is an ongoing and organic process that must evolve as life unfolds.

Today’s Homework:

Think about a decision you have been putting off making. What are the possible choices you have?

Just for a moment, let go of analyzing which choice you think you should make and just listen to your body; your intuition. If I were to flip a coin and the rules were Heads you choose option A and Tails you go with option B, which side would you secretly hope for, deep down, before knowing the outcome?

Just go with your instinct and do something to start to make that choice happen. Be willing to make a mistake, knowing that the only bad decision you can ever make is to not do something about the things you didn’t want to happen.

If things go wrong be willing to make a mistake in the opposite direction because, who knows, it might turn out to not be a mistake after all, but rather the realization of your dream!

No matter what your situation you always have choice. Don’t worry about having to choose wisely; that’s overrated.

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About the Author:

Paul Dalton is a Hypnotherapist and Personal Development Coach / Trainer with bags of experience in helping people change their lives for the better, combining skills from: hypnosis, neuro-linguistic programming, life coaching, leadership effectiveness, metaphysics, motivation techniques, and more.

Paul is also the proud creator of http://www.life-happens.co.uk/  – a Personal Development resource website for everyone interested in the fields of human potential, self-improvement and positive living.

Marketing Techniques Are More Important Than You Think

On the surface, most marketing campaigns appear alike. They mainly rely on the same advertising vehicles, involve the same types of agencies and tend to cost a fair amount of money no matter what.

Why is it then that some campaigns turn companies into near overnight successes and others just fail to make the grade? How is it that some companies with fairly average products can become household names, but companies with better products and even pricing might not even register as a blip on consumers’ radars?

In most cases, it all comes down to the techniques that were employed in the campaign. Common techniques can and do make sales. This is why they have become common. They do not, however, break records or catapult products to the top of sales charts. These techniques are simply missing the edge that others can provide.
If you want to see your business grow, the techniques used in your marketing will matter. Go with standard, straightforward tactics and your business will likely see results. Think on a deeper, more creative level and the impact will likely blow away expectations.

Consider some of the world’s most successful companies and the products they have to offer. The biggest burger chains do not necessarily have the best burgers in the world. The greatest selling sneakers might not be the most comfortable. The hottest rock bands might hurt people’s ears. Despite these things, the products they offer sell and they sell well.

So, how do they do it? The companies that are found at the pinnacle of their own industries tend to use marketing techniques that are slightly different. While their advertisements might only seem slightly slicker than others, there is more to their strategy than that.

Companies that succeed in their marketing efforts tend to appeal to people through:

1. Symbols – Their logos and advertising designs might appeal to people through symbolism. Whether it is a blatant effort or simply by chance, the right logos can reach out to people on the subconscious level. When the right message is received, people will respond.
    
2. Inborn responses – People, just like all other animals, are born with certain things that they respond to. When marketing triggers innate programming, people take notice. They will sometimes do so whether they want to or not.
    
3. Emotions – Appeal to people on an emotional level and they will be sold. When natural emotions are triggered through marketing efforts, people will tend to gravitate toward a product. If marketing makes people believe a product will make their family happy, provide them personal satisfaction, deliver fun, smiles, sex appeal or what have you, sales will follow.
    

Tried and true marketing techniques can build up your company and its product sales in a modest way. If it is time to take efforts to the next level, appealing to customers in a different way is a must. When campaigns reach out to people’s emotions, their inborn wiring or even their trust of certain symbols, the sky is often the limit.

MLM and Network Marketing Schemes

I thought I’d cover this early in our discussion – I have been involved with a number of Network Marketing Companies in the past. I have built a downline of several thousand people. I have earned thousands of dollars per month through Nework Marketing – years ago…

I have several really nice suits and cotton white shirts in my closet.

I’ve taken and written off many vacations.

I even purchased for cash a timeshare in Florida just outside of the Disney properties.

I never worked so hard in all of my life!

Some companies have really wonderful products and I still order Nuskin through my distributor account. Other companies have fizzled and all but gone away. Yet others keep going because they make so much money that they can stay alive.

I was a presenter – I had my laptop connected to a video projector and I stood up there talking to the groups that my downline ‘Invited’ to our presentations.

I did in-home demonstrations – I just can’t tell a woman that she has lines and wrinkles in her face that our product would help!

I told people that it was easy to make the money that I made – that I would show them exactly what to do.

Have you been here?

Pay attention to what I’m going to say for the rest of this post…

If a company has a product that is sold through a distribution channel that requires multiple people to earn a commission – no matter how good it is, it is going to be over priced. Remember that the company makes the biggest profit – then all of the ‘Distributors’ down the line to where the product actually gets to the customer. Whew… hard to imagine the whole $$ thing. You have a  $1.00 product that ends up costing the buyer $49.00 because of everyone in between that needs to get a cut.

No matter how good it is it takes a lot of ‘selling’ to convince the buyer that it’s worth it.

Don’t forget the ‘autoship’ product that you have to maintain – $100 of product produces commissions for all of that upline – doesn’t matter that YOU are buying it now does it!

Here is what I really didn’t like about Network Marketing…

My (BIG) income had nothing to do with my ability to sell or market the product(s) – it was directly dependent on how well I recruited, motivated and babied those in my downline.

I stopped counting how many times I heard – "I can’t find anyone to buy this stuff" or "I don’t have any friends who I can recruit"

But this is why I won’t do this ever again – no matter what the product or how close to the top I’m placed. Just never going to happen.

The difference with doing my own thing…

When I have my own company, products, services, etc – I can decide what I’m going to sell today. If wigs that make a woman look like beyonce are hot (look up ‘beyonce wigs’) then I will promote it… if it’s the beginning of the NFL season I want to be able to promote ‘NFL wear’ or Fantasy Football League web sites.

I want to choose what I’m going to sell… something that I know is hot and real people are really buying them!

I don’t want some company to tell me that their product is hot – because that’s what they produce and market – regardless of how cold the market is for their product. Just because they say that their products are needed – it’s the wanted products that I will be promoting!

IMPORTANT NOTE!

Please don’t comment about how the MLM or Network Company that you are with is different. I’ll delete your comment and ban you from this site.

We are not here to promote MLM / Network Marketing as the way to really make money.

To your continued success,

Michael Hobach