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.

Why Appealing To Emotions Can Sell

While human beings like to believe they are ruled by logic and reason alone, this is very often just not the case. Humans are emotional creations and people simply tend to react more strongly when emotional chords are struck. From how people respond to each other to why a certain product sells better than others, emotions are often the guide.

If your marketing efforts are not reaching people on an emotional level, they may fall short of the desired goal. While wholly logical, rational adverting campaigns that simply explain a product or service and why it should be purchased can make sales, they tend only produce modest results. When campaigns reach people on a different level or multiple levels, the effectiveness will show in the bottom line results.

Emotions can sell for a number of reasons. Reaching out on this level effectively is, in fact, one of the closest-guarded marketing secrets. Look around at some of the biggest companies or even at Hollywood blockbusters and it becomes clear that emotions do sell.

Appealing to emotions can be a very successful tool for these reasons:

1. Emotional advertising can turn decent products into needed items – Think about the products that people buy with a passion. Is a particular brand of soap really the best? Can it make a woman attract men a whole room away? How about a certain brand of coffee, can it really break the ice and a spark special relationship? Chances are the answers to the questions are no, but emotionally charged advertising can actually lead people to believe otherwise.
    
2. It can cut through the logic – When marketing campaigns strike the right emotional chords, they can push logic and reason to the side. When people react on an emotional level, their subconscious minds tend to take over. This is a powerful force that can lead to sales.
    
3. Emotional ads can still appeal to logic – Emotional marketing campaigns do not have to throw logic and reason out the window to be successful. When campaigns are handled with care, they can reach some people on the emotional level and others through straight sales techniques. The result is a win-win for the advertiser and the product.
    
4. Emotional campaigns can develop a sense of loyalty or good will – When the right emotions are appealed to through a campaign, people can find themselves actually feeling good about buying a particular product. Even if the product is not the best of its kind out there, many people will still be inclined to make the purchase any way. Developing product loyalty through marketing does often involve the use of emotional techniques. The end result can be a powerful force that will keep customers coming back for more.
    

There are many secrets that make great marketing campaigns great. Reaching beyond the logical is just one of the tools used by marketing experts that know how to take a good product and turn it into an incredible seller. There are many more tricks of the trade that business elite employ that others might not know about. When they are used, success is very likely to follow.

Influence Customers And Sales Will Come

What makes one product sell a hundred times better than a similar and even lower-priced brand? Why will some people pass up major savings to buy identical items at higher-priced stores? How come some service providers are overrun with business when their competition hardly receives a telephone call?

There is a single answer to all of these questions: It is influence.

When marketing professionals manage to influence consumers with their advertising and branding campaigns, it shows in people’s responses to certain products, stores and service providers. If influencing is particularly successful, consumers are likely to pass by savings, convenience and even better service and higher quality to get what it is they believe they cannot do without.

Take pause and think about marketing campaigns that have proven wildly successful. Pay attention to stores and service providers that pack in customers even if their competition has better pricing. Look at their ads, watch their commercials and see how they do things. Chances are you will see influence at work in everything they do. From the corporate or product images they create to how they appeal to consumers, the highly successful know how to wield influence.

Learning the ropes of influencing through marketing is no easy feat. There are many marketing professionals who simply have not mastered the craft and likely never will.

To use influence to one’s advantage, it takes reaching beyond the norm in marketing practices and trying to connect with people on a deeper, and often more meaningful level. Many marketers shy away from the concept because it can be risky, but traditional means of making sales are proven and will show results. Rather than take a chance that could lead to incredible sales, they prefer to stick with modest returns.

When marketers do choose to use influence to help their clients enjoy success, they will find there are a number of different directions they can go. People are influenced by a lot of different forces. On the most basic of levels, they are influenced by the need for food, shelter, clothing and water. Working on a different level, there are 22 other major motivating forces that can drive consumers to take action, purchase products or patronize particular stores or service providers. When campaigns tap into these forces, they tend to reach out to people and drive them through their desires or wants.

Learning how to market through influence requires understanding a few basic truths about people. The reality is that while many humans like to think of themselves a logic driven, most people simply are not. When marketing campaigns sell an image, a lifestyle or a feeling, they do tend to get noticed.

If your marketing campaigns are falling flat or are just not getting the results you want, it might be time to exercise a little influence. When the right motivators are used in advertising, a big change can be seen in the bottom line. Campaigns of this nature are not easy to pull off, but the risk can be well worth the rewards.