Small Business Coaching New Orleans LA

Written by Alex Blackwell - 17 Comments
Categories: self improvement

If you think about it, your decisions are the only things you are truly accountable for in your life. Everything you say or do is a result of a decision you have made.

In order to improve the quality and confidence you have in the decisions you make, as well as developing more trust in the decisions others make, consider the impact your emotions, vision and needs have on your decision making process.

Manage Your Emotions

Decision making is an emotional event. Emotions bog you down and cloud your ability to make good decisions. Medical science has shown that we make decisions emotionally, not rationally. The data behind this theory points to a small, almond-shaped part of the brain called the amygdala.

The amygdala receives the information before it is passed on to the cognitive part of your brain. The amygdala is primarily responsible for controlling our “flight vs. fight” responses.

Its purpose is to help us react quickly, without really thinking through the situation. This is good if you are confronted by a hungry tiger, but not so good if you are faced with deciding which job offer to take or any other life-changing event.

Based on this theory, science also suggests that 78% of what we think is wrong. Therefore, controlling your emotions and changing how you think is a big contributor to making better decisions. To do this, you must work on your emotional state. If you sometimes struggle with controlling your emotions, try these ideas:

• When confronted with a decision, create a visual image of a blank slate. Your blank slate should be free of clutter or old thoughts and assumptions. Try not to allow any other thoughts or feelings interfere with this image. This blank slate represents your true starting point for making a proper and quality decision.
• Pay attention to your body’s physical clues. Lower your voice, calm down and focus on not making any sudden moves. Stay in control to better control your ability to make a rational decision.
• Don’t get too high, or too low, when confronted with a tough decision. Instead, try to visualize, in advance, the outcome of your decision. Consider what will be beneficial and what might be problematic.
• Practice. Just like refining your golf swing, the more you do any thing the better you will become at doing it.

Create a Vision

Your decisions are also formed by your vision. When you see something, clearly and personally, your opportunity to make a better decision is improved.

Consider wearing seatbelts in your car. Many studies have proven, without a doubt, that wearing a seatbelt can dramatically improve your chances of surviving a car accident. So, why do some people ignore this? The answer may be they have not visualized the outcome of their decision.

If someone you know refuses to wear a seatbelt, ask what he or she think would happen if they were travelling down the high...

Written by Peter Clemens - 21 Comments
Categories: motivation

Many of us dream of a better life. Perhaps this dream involves being time affluent, having more money, pursuing a meaningful career or being free from health problems. But what would you be prepared to risk for this better life?

This was a question I recently contemplated in my article, LASIK Eye Surgery. Have You? Would You? LASIK Eye Surgery is a procedure that has the potential to dramatically improve a person’s life by freeing them from the need to wear glasses and contact lenses. But like all surgical procedures, LASIK poses inherent risks as there is no such thing as perfect surgery, a perfect surgeon, or even a perfect patient. Most of the replies to the article spoke glowingly of the procedure, but it is impossible to ignore comments such as this one by SP:

“My fiancé did the research and went to one of the best doctors in the USA for surgery. But it didn’t work. His vision is worse than it was before surgery, and now his eyes are very dry as well. So now he’s out the money from the surgery and follow-up visits, with a negative outcome. Beware, beware, beware!”

Understanding Risk

Each and every day we make choices that involve some degree of risk, in the sense that these choices could lead to negative and sometimes disastrous consequences. When we love, we risk not being loved in return. When we try, we risk failure. When we invest, we risk losing money. When we take the road less traveled, we risk being shunned by our friends and family. When we hope, we risk pain.

When it comes to LASIK, it is obvious that a patient is risking their eyesight. According to the Wikipedia, the incidence of LASIK surgery patients having unresolved complications six months after surgery is estimated to be between 3% and 6%.

I should point out, though, that the same page says, “it is important to take into account the individual risk potential of a patient and not just the average probability for all patients.” And this is true for all choices – different people will face different levels of risk when undertaking the same activity.

Managing Risk

One important way to manage risk is to mitigate (reduce) it. An excellent example of this can be seen in a recent article by Leo from Zen Habits . In this article, Leo shares how he has made the transition from being a full-time employee to that of a self-employed ProBlogger .

There are obviously risks involved in this type of career change, a fact that Leo acknowledges when we writes that it is “very very very scary.” But he has mitigated these risks by developing multiple streams of online income, paying off his debt and saving an emergency fund.

When it comes to an operation such as LASIK there are a number of ways to reduce risk, such as finding a surgeon with an excellent reputation and screening them with some tough questions. Even after mitigating risk, however, the...