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021 - How to ALWAYS make the right decision

Hello there, Kevin here with another episode of the Feel Good English podcast. The podcast that improves your English naturally while giving you lessons on how to live a better life, on how to be a better employee, on how to be a better leader.

In today’s episode, I’m going to talk about a book I recently read called “Decisive”. This book is by a couple brothers actually, believe it or not, Chip and Dan Heath, they have written this book as well as some other interesting books. And this book is about making decisions; how to make better decisions.

Making decisions is part of everything we do. Every day our days are full of numerous decisions. It could be a decision about what kind of beer to drink, if you want a single or a double espresso shot or who you would like to marry.

In this book, the authors talk about how we often make bad decisions, and through a lot of research, they found there are various reasons, which can all be dealt with, we make not the best decisions. So maybe you’re dealing with a big decision right now in your life about work, about personal life or even about English, what to do, where to go from here, this book could help you make better decisions and feel more confident about this decision you make.

The book itself answers some questions. One of these questions is, what alternative choices do I have and how can I find these choices? Another question the book answers is how can I avoid making a decision simply based on what I like? Another question, how can I stop my temporary emotions from getting in the way of a wise decision?

Is this you? Are you impulsive? Do you make decisions based on how you’re feeling at that moment and then regret the decisions you have made? Or maybe you are the opposite, kind of like me, I think about decisions too much, I over analyze these decisions, sometimes delaying taking action. Also not a good thing.

So the lesson, talk about a few points from this book that can really help you make better choices in your life and a good choice you could make after this is go to feelgoodenglish.com and learn how to become a member.

So the first idea here, the first strategy is about finding more alternatives, and not limiting yourself to just two choices.

Sometimes you feel stuck, should you do this, should you not do this? Should you stay or should you go now? And often we find ourselves just deciding between two choices, black or white, one or two, go or stay.

But this limits us. Let me give you an example. Let’s say your boyfriend gets a new job in another city. You guys love each other, it’s the most beautiful relationship in the history of humans, you are lucky gal. But he’s moving and you have a job where you live, you have your friends and he’s going three hours away by car, and you don’t know what to do. Should you go with you or should you stay? And it seems you that if you go with him, everything would be beautiful, except you will lose your job and your friends. And if you stay, you keep all of those things but you will lose your amazing boyfriend.

Well, according to this book, what you should do is think of various alternatives. Maybe you should let him go for a couple months to see how it is. Maybe you should commit to going down weekends twice a month and he could come to your city twice a month. Maybe you could look for a job in that other city you will find a great job as well. So there’s alternatives that can make the situation not so black and white.

Possibly he will leave and after he goes to the city and after couple weeks you say, “Wow! I sure like being alone, maybe that wasn’t the most beautiful relationship ever. I am ready to start dating somebody else.”

Anyway, you have to look at something called the opportunity cost, what are the costs of that decision. If you make a decision to go with your boyfriend to the other city, the cost would be losing your job and losing your friends or not having him around as much. Versus the other opportunity cost, staying in your city, would be possibly losing your boyfriend, maybe the relationship would get even better, that’s a possibility. So the opportunity cost there might not be as much.

Let’s give you another example of opportunity cost. Let’s say you want to go study in the US, you want to study English for a month, and that costs $5000. That’s would be your opportunity cost, $5000. Well, what are some other options? Maybe you could do an intensive English course in your own city, which would cost $2000 and it’s three months. Maybe it’s not as fun or exciting, however, you would have more dollars saved so then after your English course, you could go to the US for a couple weeks and just travel and practice English with the dollars that you saved. So that’s an alternative, looking at the opportunity costs of a decision.

And the other strategy I am going to talk about from the book, then again, there are several in the book that are great. These are just the two that I think are the most, the easiest to implement.

And this one is; distance ourselves from emotions that come up when we are trying to make a decision. Being impulsive.

All of us have gone through a time where we are very stressed or angry or upset or sad or frustrated and we made a decision based on those emotions. Maybe you got an e-mail from somebody and you really interpreted it in a way that maybe you shouldn’t have, and you got upset and you replied angrily only to find that the person that wrote you that was not trying to be rude or offensive, but you took it the wrong way. But once you sent the e-mail, it was too late. Has this ever happened to you?

There is a strategy they talk about in the book for this and it’s the ten, ten, ten rule. When thinking about making a decision, think “How will I feel about this decision in ten minutes? How would I feel about this decision in ten months? How would I feel about this decision in ten years?”

How about an example? So let’s say you are in school and the girl next to you is hot and you want to take her out on a date and impress her, the first step would be to call her. You don’t really know her, she doesn’t really know you, so you’re not sure what to do. Well, think about it. If you call her now, how are you going to feel in ten minutes? In ten minutes maybe you’ll be embarrassed because the call went wrong. In ten months you won’t feel a thing. In ten years, obviously you won’t even remember. So there’s a very brief consequence but in the future, it’s not a big deal.

And what you can do here, and this is a very interesting idea, imagine giving advice to your best friend. When you talk to your best friend, when you give them advice, you’re able to disconnect from the emotions from that because it’s not your life, you don’t really think from their perspective because you don’t have to deal with the emotions. You are thinking more logically, your thinking on a more practical level.

So if your friend said “I should call this girl, she is hot, but I am nervous.” You as a friend what would you say? “Of course, just call her man. What are you scared of? Just call her. Don’t be a woosy.” So, being the friend and just giving very practical advice, you’re not worried about being embarrassed, you just say “Hey man, just call her.”

And that’s a good way to look at things. So if you are making a big decision in your life, think of what you would tell a best friend of yours who was in the same situation. I am sure you would feel a little more clear on the whole situation when you don’t have to worry about the emotional consequences. Very interesting. It seems very practical, very easy to do. So ask yourself, “What would I recommend that my best friend do?” So now what are you going to do? Well, the next time you find yourself stuck and not sure what decision to make about something, about life, business, whatever that may be, do these things. First, think of more than two options, think of as many possibilities or solutions or options as you can, there’s always more than just two. So spend some time, be creative, don’t limit your options.

And lastly, think of what you would tell your best friend if he was in the same dilemma, if he had the same decision to make, the same circumstances, what would you tell him? And then reverse that and bring it back on yourself. Maybe that will help you think through things a little more clearly. Got it?

So going over some words and expressions and vocabulary from today’s lesson, things that I said that might be new to you.

In the beginning of the episode I say “All of which can be dealt with.” “Can be dealt with.” D-E-A-L-T. So this is the passive voice tense, passive voice. The name of the tense isn’t that important, but basically it means when you are talking about something and you’re not using the subject as somebody who is doing something, you’re just talking about how something is done without the subject, something is done. So, “The car was washed.” Instead of “I washed the car.” “The car was washed.” That’s passive voice.

So here we have passive voice “Can be dealt with”. “Be dealt with.” “Dealt” comes from “Deal”, to deal with something, and to deal with something is to take care of it, to handle a problem. So the situation can be dealt with. I’m not talking about who can do it, this is leaving the person out of the situation. So this is good when you want to talk about a problem but you don’t want to focus on any one person handling that problem. We have a problem here at work and this needs to be dealt with.

At around 1 minute and fifty three seconds, I use the expression “getting in the way of”, to get in the way of is to obstruct, to prevent from progressing, to become an obstacle, to get in the way of. All of these meetings every day are getting in the way of me finishing my work.

At three minutes and twenty one seconds, I used the word “gal” G-A-L. “You are a lucky gal,” “Gal” is a slang word to call a woman or a girl, it’s a friendly way, “Yeah, she is a nice gal.” It would be the same as “She is a nice girl.” “She’s a nice woman.” Just a very informal way, slang way of saying “girl” or “woman”.

Another one, “You took it the wrong way.” This is a good expression, “to take something the wrong way” means to misunderstand something, to misunderstand somebody’s intentions or words. They write you an e-mail and they’re not trying to be mean or rude but you took it the wrong way, you understood it the wrong way, you thought they were trying to be rude or offensive. So taking something the wrong way is to misunderstand, to not understand the real meaning.

And the last one at around seven minutes and forty seconds, I used the word “Wussy”. “Don’t be a wussy!” Slang, and this means to call somebody weak, kind of weak like a wimp. W-I–MP, wimp, is like a wussy. Usually for a man, we would call another man or another boy a wussy. It could be not courageous also could be not physically strong in both ways if you are weak, you are a wussy.

Cool, great book, hope this is useful for ya. And again, if you want the transcripts, go to feelgoodenglish.com/member, or just go on the website, you will find a button or a picture or something pretty that will take you to that page.

I will see you soon with another episode. Thank you for listening, wherever you are out there in the world. I hope you are using this to its full benefits and to do that go back, now that you have learned some of the vocabulary, go back and listen to this again, listen to it a few times, don’t be lazy.

And your joke for the day…

“I went to the zoo the other day. They only had one dog. It was a shit-zu!”

See you next time.