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Decide Commentary

Hello, welcome my special VIP members. This is A.J. Hoge, welcome to the commentary for ‘Decide’, or ‘Decision’, or ‘Decisiveness’.

In the video I talked a lot about this topic of taking action, of deciding. Maybe some people think well A.J. that’s so simple. That’s a very simple way to define a leader, and yet you know that really is the essence of leadership. It’s what I’ve seen in my life, in many different parts of my life, many aspects of my life.

It’s not just business, it’s my personal life and everything. I have found that for some reason most people avoid making bigger decisions. Especially when the decision is required for something that’s difficult or new or uncomfortable what people will tend to do is they will just continue doing the same thing they’ve always done, because it’s comfortable.

Even when it’s a problem, even when there’s some pain involved or some problem involved, still people will often avoid making decisions because for most people the fear of failure is bigger than the problem or the pain of the problem they are experiencing right now.

That’s what really is happening. Unfortunately, in school and in work situations depending on where you work, we have this incredible fear of making mistakes, of getting the wrong answer. People avoid making decisions.

To be a leader it’s so simple really. In the past I never thought I would be a leader, I never thought I was a leader. When I was younger I was very independent, so I was not a follower either. I was in fact a big rebellious, I still am sometimes.

I like to do things my way. I just did things my way I didn’t try to convince other people to do things my way. I didn’t try to convince other people to do anything. But what’s interesting is that I found just by making decisions, trying new things and being very decisive consistently again and again, making tough decisions and doing something, learning and then doing something again, not being afraid of taking action – by doing that I found that I kind of became a leader by default.

By default, means automatically almost. I wasn’t really trying to become a leader, but I became a leader. I became a leader simply by being decisive in my own life.

For example, when I was younger I had no interest in business at all, but I wanted to travel and I wanted to explore the world. I still do, but it started when I was young.

I just took off to all these different countries. I made a decision to go to Korea to teach English. It was my first time living in another country. When I made that decision actually my best friend got inspired by my decision, and she came along with me.

Later, another time in my life, I made the decision to travel to Thailand and live in Thailand, and do my master’s degree in Thailand. By being decisive I got my best friend and another good friend to go with me and live there with me and study.

I found in my life that just by charging forward and taking decisive action and doing something, especially something interesting, that people have started to follow along with me many times. I don’t have to say much to them, I might invite them, but I don’t have to do a lot of leadership techniques and methods or anything like that.

This kind of leadership style might be called leading from the front. Leading from the back is what a lot of leaders do, that’s where you sit back and try to tell people what to do. Oh you should do this – and you’re in the back trying to push them forward.

A lot of people don’t like leaders like that. You’re pushing them and they will react by pushing back or not doing very much.

Leading from the front means you take a decisive action and you get some kind of result, you learn, and you take another decisive action. People will look at you differently when you do this; they will see you as being bolder. They will of course see you as being decisive, and that will make them feel more confident about what you’re doing.

It will inspire them to want to come along with you. What you’ll find is that the more decisive you are the more people will look to you for advice. The more people will look to you to make a decision.

It’s now very easy for me in certain areas of my life to just make a decision and I can get several people to join me because I have this consistent record of being decisive. That’s all I did, it’s such a simple thing.

I don’t use a lot of psychology leadership tricks or something on people, I don’t do it – I’m not interested in doing it really. I try to learn about leadership principles and I read leadership books certainly, but still fundamentally in essence, my basic leadership philosophy is be decisive, take lots of actions, learn from them and then take more decisive actions that’s it, that’s what I do.

That’s what I do in business, that’s what I do in my personal life, and it has allowed me to be a leader in several areas. Because I have been decisive I also have developed my confidence.

We talk a lot about this topic of confidence here in the VIP program. Confidence is important. People respect confidence. People will follow a leader who is confident more quickly than they will follow one who is competent.

In other words, people are not looking for perfection. You don’t need to be perfect at what you’re doing. You don’t need to make perfect decisions. People are not looking for that so much, what they’re looking for is confidence. They’re looking for decisiveness, calm and strength, so that even when you make a mistake and things go badly – sometimes it’s not your fault, things just happen – you’re not going to freeze or become paralyzed and do nothing. You’re going to stay calm and strong and deal with the problem and make more decisions and keep moving forward.

That is what makes a great leader. That is what people want. That is the kind of person they will follow. That is the kind of person they respect.

It’s kind of a circular thing here because decisiveness and confidence are dependent on each other. You’ve got to give yourself a little confidence or a little faith or something to make a decision. You’ve got to be confident in yourself.

You have to be confident that whatever happens, I can handle it. If something bad happens, its okay, I can still handle the problem. If something good happens I can handle the success and keep moving forward.

You have to have a little faith in yourself. You have to develop that in yourself, and then take decisive action. Make a decision, then something happens and you do handle it.

You will. It doesn’t matter what the situation is, how bad and scary it seems to be, it’s always scariest before you make the decision.

Once you make the decision and it happens, you will find that you’re stronger than you imagined. You will find that yes, you can handle it. Yes, you can continue to make decisions. Yes, you can continue to move forward.

When you do that and you actually experience it – not in your mind, you actually make a decision and deal with the situation – and you realize you can handle it, your confidence grows. You realize hey – I can handle things.

When you’re more confident you become more decisive. Next time there’s a problem, next time a big decision is necessary, you hesitate less. You have that past experience you know you can handle it. You know you can handle anything, and boom you make another decision and you go forward and good or bad, you handle it again.

You can see this is an upward spiral again. We’re always talking about upward spirals in the VIP program. It just means when you do certain things, when you have certain beliefs, you build momentum. You build forward motion that gets stronger and faster.

You go forward and up, forward and up, more and more and more.

This is what we want to create in our life, in all aspects of our life, so we always have this momentum, this feeling of moving forward and up, more and more, better and better.

It just requires shifting, changing some beliefs or changing a few little actions. When you take those little positive actions they begin to grow and get stronger, and then they become bigger positive actions and bigger positive beliefs.

They keep growing bigger and bigger and stronger and stronger, because what we’re really talking about is building your own strength and confidence. That’s what this is about.

Being decisive really just means trusting yourself, trusting yourself to handle anything that happens. Trusting that yes, I can handle it. Yes, if something bad happens it’s going to be painful, but I’m strong enough to keep going.

If there’s a failure and people will see that I failed – knowing that you’re strong enough to handle the failure and learn from it and keep going. You are strong enough to do that.

People are so worried about failing, oh my God, what will people think – screw what other people think. Who cares?

Do you know what other people think? Other people think oh my God, I couldn’t do what he or she just did. When you make a decisive action, even if you fail, yes other people might criticize and say things, because that’s what other people do who are afraid, but also I guarantee what they’re thinking is wow, I can’t believe they did that. I can’t believe they tried that.

When you do something decisive, when you do something bold, when you take a risk you get people’s respect, even when you fail. People will look at you differently. They will respect you more because you tried it. You didn’t get paralyzed, you didn’t freeze, and you didn’t let fear overcome you.

Whatever it is in your life, what I want you to do this month and continue for the rest of your life is practice making your decisions faster, everything. Be more decisive. Make your decisions faster, and stick with your decision and keep moving forward.

Keep moving forward, don’t get stuck thinking about things too much. Let me give you a small example. Let’s imagine you’re going on vacation. I know a lot of people like this I travel with friends and family.

There are some people who have to plan every little bit of the vacation. They must plan everything, and it takes them a long time to plan it because they’re always worried.

Let’s imagine we’re going to India, to Bombay. We’re going there and if I go, I would just go. I would just get a ticket and fly there, then when I arrived I might read a guidebook before hand, find out where most of the hotels are, I’d arrive there and I’d get a hotel.

Maybe if I thought I was arriving late at night, I might actually make a reservation. What a lot of people do is oh, my God, they’ll look in their guidebook where there are five or six hotels and they all sound good, but they’re not sure. This one is a little expensive, but the other one is in a better location but it’s even more, but this one is cheap but it’s in a bad location oh, my God.

They will think and think and thing, and worry and worry and worry about this little decision. It will take them days and days to just pick one hotel. Maybe they’ll call all the hotels and ask questions, and they’re still not sure. Do you know why they’re not sure?

Because they’ve never been to the city, so they don’t really know.

They’re just imagining what it’s like, they’re imagining what might be good, they’re imagining what might go wrong, they’re imagining what problems there might be, but they have no idea because they’ve never been. You don’t know until you go. You don’t know until you decide.

That’s how people get paralyzed. They’ll be this way about every single decision. This vacation turns into this huge difficult thing, and every little decision is so slow and so painful and so difficult. That’s not leadership. If people don’t respect it, people will not follow you when you’re like that.

A leader looks at the guidebook quickly, reads up quickly, says oh these five hotels sound good, and they just pick one. It doesn’t matter. You don’t know, you’ll find out when you get there.

The leader just picks one – we’re going to stay at this place. They go there, and they go to that hotel. Let’s imagine they go to that hotel and it’s terrible. It’s dirty and horrible and dangerous. It’s no big deal, what do you do? You just go to another one.

You say okay, this decision didn’t work out. I had no idea, never been to this city before.

I tried to make the best decision but now that we’re here we see the situation is different than we’d hoped, so now we have to make another decision.

What do you do? You just pick another one on that list and say now we’re going here.

You get a taxi and go to the next hotel. That’s leadership, that’s decisiveness using a very simple and easy example.

Can you see the difference between worrying about it so much and just deciding? If things don’t go well you decide again. People will follow that, that’s how you become a leader. That’s leadership.

You can practice this in your life starting with small decisions. Please do this. Start with the small decisions, start building your decisiveness.

Let me give you a small example you can use in your own life; going out to eat. Have you ever been with friends or with your husband or wife or boyfriend or girlfriend and been like, what do you want to eat tonight? I don’t know what do you want to eat tonight? I don’t know.

Well we could eat Mexican food – I don’t know. What about Italian food? I don’t know.

What about Chinese?

You have this long debate about what should we eat and what restaurant should we go to, and I don’t know – should we eat at home? It’s this long thing. Just decide – just pick one, it doesn’t matter.

Next time you’re in that situation just say strongly and confidently – let’s eat Mexican food, or whatever it is. Let’s do this. Just make a decision. Then the other person can say no, I don’t want that and you can say okay let’s eat Chinese.

You don’t keep debating and debating forever. Certainly you want to hear their input, but if they don’t have any input, if they aren’t being decisive, if they’re being indecisive, then you decide – just make a decision. You decide, make a decision.

It’s the same thing in all parts of your life. I want you little and big to just start making decisions faster. Where are you going to eat? Make a decision. What you’re going to eat when you’re looking at the menu? Don’t take 20-30 minutes looking at the menu, just look at it quickly and pick one. You’re not going to know until you eat it if it’s good or not so just pick one. Then you’ll know.

Next time you go to that restaurant you can get something else or get the same thing, it doesn’t matter. Just decide. Most of these decisions are really not so important and we make our lives more difficult than necessary by worrying about them instead of just taking quick action and moving forward.

Keep moving forward. That’s the whole point of this commentary, of this topic, keep moving forward. Don’t stop. It’s when you stop that your life starts feeling difficult and complicated and oh my God. When you stop nobody is going to follow you. Leaders keep moving forward.

Okay, do you have it? I hope you’ve got it. It’s such a simple topic and it’s so important, and for some people it’s actually very difficult.

All I want you to do this month – you have simple homework – make decisions faster.

Make small decisions faster, make big decisions faster and then whatever happens keep moving forward and continue making fast decisions.

That’s what I want you to do. It’s about speed this month, fast decisions. Not good ones – I don’t care if you make a good decision, make some bad ones. It’s okay. In fact, if you make bad ones, it might be better because then you’ll really grow your confidence.

You’ll get more confident because you’ll realize even if I make a bad decision its okay, I can handle it, and keep moving forward.

Make lots of decisions this month, make them fast – fast, fast, fast decisions. Make good ones, make bad ones, it doesn’t matter. Make small ones make big ones, just fast decisions.

In business make decisions faster at your job. Just decide. Don’t ask permission from your boss, just make a decision and do it. If you’re the boss just make a decision and do it. Keep doing that this month, faster, faster and faster.

In your personal life if you’re like what should I do about my relationship – just make a decision. I’m staying, I’m leaving – it doesn’t matter, just decide and do it. Commit. Keep moving forward, you can change your mind later.

In work, in school, in everything – fast, fast, fast decisions this month. I guarantee you people will start to look at you differently and respect you more just by making faster decisions and making you more confident.

I hope you enjoyed this topic. I’m passionate about this topic because it’s so simple, yet it is probably the number one thing that has allowed me to become a leader in different fields, sometimes just in terms of my family and friends, and in terms of teaching, internationally.

This is it, this is the core secret. This is how I did it. I hope you will do this too in your life. Make fast decisions. Have a great month and I’ll see you again.