Master Your Decisions: The Psychology of Taking Action

0:28Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor podcast. right now and order it. Today, we're going to be talking about how to master your decisions, and we're going to be diving into the whole psychology of what it takes for you to take actions, whether it's the action that you want to take or not want to take. Life is very simple, though. But when I say that it's simple, I don't mean that it's always easy. Your life can basically be boiled down into a series of choices, both conscious and unconscious choices, and you make decisions from those choices. You have option A, B, C, D, whatever it might be.

1:02Sometimes it's two options. Sometimes it's 10. And you have these choices that you can go for and you make a decision on what the best thing is for you. But a lot of the times the decisions that you're making are not actually even conscious decisions. They're usually made unconsciously. And all of the choices that we make, the decisions that we make later on down the road from those choices turn into consequences. Everything that we do, every action that we take has consequences, good or bad. And every moment of your life, you are taking action. Even if you're just sitting on the couch and you're watching the ceiling and you're just staring at it, you're still taking action because you're sitting, that is an action, and you're staring at the ceiling, that is also taking an action.

1:42Both of those are actions. And so there's a choice of you could get off the couch and do something else, or you could stay on the couch. That's the choice. And a decision is behind that, stay on the couch or go do the thing that you're going to do. You know, when your alarm goes off in the morning. Choices can be made and you will make a decision whether you're going to get up or whether you're going to hit the snooze. If you hit the snooze, that's what you've decided. Choices can be made in that moment and you can decide what you're going to do or not do. So I'm going to go through and give you a bunch of examples and we're going to talk about why this is really important in your life, how to master the actual psychology of taking action, how to get better at all of the decisions that you make.

2:21You know, so let's say that you're scrolling on Instagram, right? In that moment, choices can be made. There's choices and options that you have, and there's a decision that you need to make, whether you're going to continue to that or doing something else as well. You have an option where you could continue on Instagram. That's the choice. You could, the choice is you can continue on Instagram more. You could pick up a book and decide to start reading the book instead. You get to make the decision of what you're going to do. Choices are there. Decisions will be made. What you're going to do is going to happen.

2:50And then you take some sort of action. So it's a choice, it's a decision, and then it's an action. And we need to become very clear of what choices we have in front of us, what decisions we make and need to make in order to create the life we want, and what actions will be best to go from there. But your entire life is made up of choices, decisions, and actions. All day, every day. The problem is that we make a lot of bad decisions. And a lot of times we do it unconsciously. We've been doing them for so long that we don't even realize that we're doing them. And we just continue to keep doing them unless we bring them to the conscious mind and actually start to process whether we want to continue doing them.

3:25And today we're going to talk about how all of those things shape your life and how to make good decisions that you want to make to create the life that you want and how to also stop the bad decisions that are holding you back. So let's dive into the psychology of the actual choice itself. Now you might look at an action and say an action is pretty straightforward. You just decide to do something or you don't decide to do something. That seems straightforward, but beneath the surface, you have to realize behind every choice that you have, behind every decision that you make and behind every action that you take, before anything happens, there's a really complex cognitive process that happens inside of your brain.

4:01with each and every choice that you have in front of you, it filters through a paradigm of your entire life. Yourself, how you view yourself, the world, everything that's ever happened to you, your traumas, your successes, your failures, every conversation you've ever had, every choice goes through that filter before a decision is made. And a decision is what happens after it goes through that filter. Problem is, majority of the time we're making decisions unconsciously. You know, at your conscious mind and your unconscious mind, your conscious mind is about 5 % of the thoughts that go through your head.

4:34Your unconscious controls about 95 % of what goes through your head. So let me give you an example. For instance, let's say you decide to scroll on Instagram instead of focusing on growing your business. Maybe growing your business, what you could do is you could go knock on some doors for this new business that you have and start talking to businesses, or you could make some cold calls to other people. Doing the difficult thing will grow your business. Your decision is not necessarily driven by lack of ambition or laziness in your life. Instead, it might be that your subconscious attempts to avoid potential rejection or criticism.

5:13And so you might be afraid of being rejected. Let's say that's one of your biggest fears. You're afraid of rejection. So in a millisecond, your brain decides to scroll instead of putting yourself out there. But we must become really aware of these subconscious decisions that we make as quickly as we possibly can. Because if we don't, they'll control our lives. And so our minds develop what's called defense mechanisms. Whatever your mind is doing, if you're like, man, I can't stop holding myself back. The reason why is because there's an aspect of yourself, of your mind, of your subconscious that is trying to protect you from something.

5:49And if you can start to realize that, then you start asking yourself, what is it trying to protect me from? Maybe it's trying to steer me away from a situation that I might perceive as a threat. And so it tries to steer me towards safer waters, better territories where I won't be injured, where my limiting beliefs won't come online, where my fears won't be triggered. And a lot of times we don't even recognize it. But what this means is that with each action, conscious or unconscious, with each action contains an inherent goal, a goal of some sort. And more often that goal is aimed at something that I like to just put a broad stroke on of self-preservation.

6:29Most often, your goal in what you do or don't do is aimed at self-preservation, protection. It is all a protection mechanism. So scrolling on Instagram, instead of putting yourself out there, knocking on doors, making cold calls, is a protection mechanism. It is trying to protect you from going out there and being triggered by a fear or limiting belief. It's easier to sit on the couch and scroll on Instagram because your fears and limiting beliefs are not necessarily going to come online than it is to go and knock on doors and get rejected right in your face. And so that decision to stay on Instagram is a decision and an action that is based in self-preservation.

7:10You are trying to protect yourself. So let's dive into these goals that come from the decisions and the actions and all that stuff that we have. When I say goals, I don't mean like life goals, like, hey, I want to lose 40 pounds or I want to become a millionaire. I don't mean those. What I mean is hidden. These are little tiny hidden goals inside of your choices and inside of your decisions and inside of your actions. Every choice and every decision you make carries an inherent goal in it. So let me give you a couple of examples just to try to make this all make sense. You have a choice. You can either work out or you can skip the workout.

7:45If you choose to exercise, the reason why is because the goal is to lose weight or to improve health or to have abs or to look sexy in a bikini. Yeah, that makes sense, right? Let's say that you have a choice. Let's say it's you could read or you could scroll on Instagram, going back to the original one, and you decide, you know what? I'm going to read. Well, the inherent goal that's hidden inside of there is to be more intelligent or to learn more so that you can have better conversations because the more that you know, the better you're able to hold conversations. Okay, so those make sense when we look at positive goals.

8:18But let's say you have a choice. You could watch Netflix or you could sit down and create a presentation for work. And you choose Netflix and you decide to procrastinate on it. If you choose Netflix, what you're doing is you're choosing self-preservation. You're trying to protect yourself. So then you take a step back and you ask yourself, well, what's really behind this? What's why am I if I'm choosing Netflix, if I'm procrastinating, knowing I should be doing this thing, what am I trying to protect myself from? Oh, you know what? I'm afraid of public speaking or I'm afraid of screwing it up.

8:49And I'm afraid of looking like a fool in front of my boss. So what you do instead is you procrastinate and you watch, you know, trashy reality TV instead to distract yourself from the uncomfortable feelings of possibly being embarrassed if you do put this presentation together. And so you procrastinate. Make sense? Let's say that another option is you have a choice. You could learn to get better with your money. You can learn about stocks. You can learn about investing. You can learn about money management. Or you could just act like it's something that you don't need to learn. I don't need a budget right now.

9:24I don't need to learn how to budget, even though you know that it's going to help you out. Well, you choose not to learn, let's say. That's an act of self-preservation. We take a step back and we say, okay, me not learning about investing, how is that self-preservation? What's really behind it? Maybe you want to not put in the hard work to learn. Maybe you know that if you start learning it, you'll realize how much you don't know, and then you'll be really uncomfortable because once you learn how much there is to learn, you're like, I can't do this. I feel stupid. And maybe you're just trying to, the self-preservation is trying to make yourself not feel stupid.

10:01And so you decide, you know what, I'm just going to skip it and I'm never going to get good with money and have financial freedom, right? So these goals that are right there, even in the negative things, these goals are invisible threads that connect you through your choice, through your decision, through your actions, and eventually with all of that consequences later on down the road, you know that it's much better to read than scroll on Instagram. Why aren't you doing it? You know that it's much better to decide that you're going to work out versus skipping the workout. You know that it's much better to learn about financial literacy and getting better at that than it is to not learn about it.

10:37But you're not doing it. Why are you not doing it? Because there's an act of self-preservation that's behind it. There is a goal that you're trying of some sort of fear, limiting belief that you're trying to protect yourself from. And so these goals that are kind of hide in between everything are kind of like these invisible threads that go through your life. It just kind of has, it's like an octopus, like is a visual I think of. It's like, it's got its tentacles all in your life. And if you're not paying attention, you're going to miss it. And so you start thinking about this, you start realizing, normally we think of goals as a good thing, but is it possible that we have some goals that are negative that are holding us back that we might be unconscious of?

11:14Maybe there's a hidden goal. And so when you look at something like procrastination, I always say procrastination is not a problem. Procrastination is never a problem. Procrastination is the symptom of something else. There's a main problem that is upstream of that. Procrastination is like downstream effect. It is the symptom, but there's a cause somewhere in there. What is the thing that is causing you to procrastinate? What is the fear? What is the hidden goal that is trying to use as self-preservation to get you to not take action. Like the example I said where you could watch Netflix or you could put your presentation together.

11:52Well, if you're not putting your presentation together, even though you should and you need to, and you're on a time crunch, there's some form of self-preservation that's happening. Oh, I don't want to embarrass myself in front of my boss. Oh, I don't like public speaking. I don't want to look like an idiot. I don't want to lose my job. And so you're procrastinating because you want to avoid rejection or you don't want to look stupid or you don't want to make yourself uncomfortable or you're afraid of being seen or you don't want to be judged. Whatever it might be, there's some form of protection mechanism that's happening right there for self-preservation.

12:22And this tendency to avoid discomfort often makes us go for easier choices that provide immediate gratification versus going for the delayed gratification, which is the hard choices now, which usually if we choose the easy route, usually down the road it's going to turn into bad results, bad consequences, in the long term, which goes back to what I've said many times this podcast, which is life is either easy now and it's hard later or it's hard now and it's easy later. When you look at the grand scheme of your life, we're presented with a choice multiple times per day. We can take the path of least resistance, the easy route, and just decide not to take the hard road.

13:06We can do that. Or we can say, you know what, instead of immediate gratification, I'm going to take the hard road because I know what I want my future to look like and I know I'm going to have to do hard stuff now to make myself easy. When you do what's easy now, you will absolutely 100 % make your life harder down the road. When you do what is hard now, you will 100 % make your life easier down the road. Hey, are you a coach, consultant, or expert in your field, but you struggle with how to market and sell your services effectively? Well, you may not know this, but along with this podcast, I also own a company called The School for Online Coaches.

13:40And since 2019, myself and my team have trained and supported over 1 ,400 coaches in starting and growing their coaching businesses online. This is where I teach everything that you need to know to start and grow your own coaching business to$10 ,000 a month in as little as 30 to 60 days. So if you're dying to see what it's like to be your own boss, work remotely, and create a business that helps people change their lives and feels fulfilling to you, head over to schoolforonlinecoaches.com right now. That's where you can learn more information about how to grow your business. Once again, it is school4onlinecoaches.com.

14:16So easy now, hard later, hard now, easy later. It goes back to the, I always think of it, which is the Jim Rohn quote, which is, we must all suffer one of two things, the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. Which one do you want? I always say that the pain of, the only thing worse than the pain of hard work is the pain of regret. I would much rather work hard. I would much rather work hard for what it is that I want, what I'm trying to create, the life I want for myself. I'd much rather work hard at something than 10, 20 years down the road regret that I didn't do it. And so when you look at easy now, easy now provides immediate comfort.

14:52And the other, although it's really challenging, usually creates a more satisfying, long-lasting results, better rewards later on down the road. And so choosing the easier route often makes temporary relief. oh, okay, instant gratification. I don't have to think about that presentation. I don't have to think about my fears. I don't have to think about limiting beliefs. I don't think about my boss thinking I look stupid. So I'm going to choose easier right now. I'm going to watch Netflix instead. But that path often leads to really significant challenges in the future. For instance, let's say you decide to binge watch a series instead of studying for an exam that you need to get done.

15:31And you might have the exam coming up in a couple of days. Now, watching and binge watching TV is immediate gratification. You get your mind off of your fears, your limiting beliefs. You get a little bit of dopamine to make yourself feel good because you're sitting there and you're not paying attention to what, you know, your fears and your limiting beliefs. But if you delay it long enough, you're going to get more stress because now you have less time to study for a big exam. So it could result in more stress. It could result to poor grades. It could result to potential academic problems later on.

16:03But on the opposite side of that, opting for the more challenging route involves discomfort, usually in the immediate. But it always makes the exam easier and eventually could lead to better grades. It can lead to less stress. It could mean potentially greater career opportunities later on down the road. So you have to realize when you're sitting there and you're thinking about instant gratification versus delayed gratification, Instant is always easy now. Delayed is always hard now. And so instant will make your life easy right now, but it'll make your life hard down the road. Delayed will make your life hard now, but it'll make your life easy down the road.

16:46And so you either get instant gratification or you get delayed gratification. And your life is just a series of decisions that you make in the present moment. That's it. It's just a series of decisions. Okay, here's my two choices. I can either study or not study. Okay, what's my decision? If I decide to go not study, I'm choosing instant gratification, but it's going to make my life harder down the road. If I decide to study, well, that's going to make my life, you know, a little bit hard right now, but it's going to make my life easier in the future. And so you have to start to realize how this will start to change you.

17:20The human brain, what you need to know is naturally the human brain will almost always, if you're not paying attention, gravitate towards safety and comfort. And that's fine, but it's not really fine when you start to fast forward your life, a year, two years, five years down the road, right? And so if you feel recently like your life has been stagnant, like you've been lacking growth, you've been lacking achievement, you feel like you're not moving. And when I say the word stagnant, I always think of like a pool of water that's been sitting there for a while and it's got mold on the top of it and there's bugs that are inside of it and there's bugs that are flying on top of it.

17:59like do you want your life to be that like stagnant probably not but if you don't do something about it's what your life is going to become and so what we have to do is we have to start being much more intentional whenever we're presented with a choice to make a decision that is going to yield better results for us in the future and so being intentional involves consciously recognizing that we are inherently lazy and we always do want to go the easy route but when you're proactive making your decisions with finding decisions that align and taking decisions and actions that align with your long-term goals, even if they are difficult right now, you will make your life better down the road.

18:39And so it's important to choose hard choices and hard decisions, even if you don't get any benefit right now and the benefit doesn't come for a year or two years or five years down the road. And really what this comes down to, I was having a conversation about this and I was on a Zoom call the other day and I was talking about building confidence. And what I have found, I was thinking about, I was like, man, I have not been confident my whole life. Like there was a good 19 years of my life where I was not confident. I was shy. I couldn't talk very well to people. I wasn't outgoing and I wasn't confident in myself at all.

19:14And I started thinking like, when did I start to become more confident? Because confidence is not something that you're born with. Confidence is something that you build along the way in your life. And I started thinking about it. And when I first started at a, uh, this sales company inside of the sales company, you normally, the way that you start inside the sales company I was in is you start with friends and family. You do a presentation for them. You do a presentation for your, your mom, your dad, your aunt, uncle, your best friends, parents, all of that. And then you ask for recommendations, referrals to other people who might be interested in looking at the same product that I'm selling, right?

19:47That is how you build a network of people. The problem with that is that I was in school, I was in college, an hour away, about an hour and 15 minutes away from where I grew up. So I didn't know anybody in the city of Tampa, but I needed to build a referral base. And so what I did was I went into this room, we called it inside of the office, we called it the dungeon. And it was this room that had the air conditioning and it was cold and it was wet. And even though it was so cold that even though it was in Florida, I had to take a hoodie and wear a hoodie and a sweater every single time I went in there.

20:17And inside of the dungeon, there was tens of thousands of receipts of all of the people who had purchased the product before. And the product that we had were mostly knives, kitchen knives, utensils, all that type of stuff. And so what I would do is I would look through all of these tens of thousands of these receipts, and I would just cold call these people. And I would say, hey, listen, I know you bought your knife set about four years ago. Would you be interested in me coming out and sharpening them for free. And I just started cold calling a hundred people a day, a hundred people a day, a hundred people a day.

20:49And I remember sitting in the back at this little tiny table that was inside of the room that we call the dungeon. And I remember sitting there and being like, I don't want to do this. I don't want to do this, but I just don't want this. I have a friend who made$800 last week. And when you're 19 years old,$800, like the most money in the world. And I was like, he made$800 last week. I have$12 in my bank account. I'd rather work hard and stop being broke than be broke the rest of my life. And so I just decided to call these people and just do it. And even though I did not want to do it, there was no part of me that wanted to do this.

21:17I decided I was going to do it. I could have not done. I could have chose instant gratification, decided to go to the Chinese restaurant that was next to the office and just gone there and hung out and hang out with my friends. I could have done that. But instead I went the hard route. And what I've come to realize is that is where my confidence was actually built, is showing up for myself day in, day out, day in, day out, having a lot of people say no to me, having some people hang up with me, having some people be like, why the fuck are you calling me right now. And that getting that immediate rejection.

21:46But with that, some people said, yes, oh my gosh, yes, it'd be great for you to come out. Oh yes, it'd be great for you to come out. And I started seeing some people and seeing some people and I would go out there and I'd sharpen their knives. Sometimes they buy a little bit more for me, but a lot of times they would recommend me to their friends. Oh my gosh, my friend Sally came over. She was using these knives the other day and she's like, these are amazing. Where'd you get them? I'm going to refer you to her. So then I started going to all of these appointments and building a referral base.

22:06And my confidence was built not by being a lazy college student that didn't do the hard things. My confidence was built by showing up for myself over and over and making 100 cold calls every single day, Monday through Friday, until I built the book of business that I wanted. And that's what I think is really important about paying attention to your choices, your decisions, and your actions. It's sure, you can take the easy route. We can always take the easy route. That's what life is. It's just a series of choices to decide what video game character we want to be on the next level. And it's like, for me, what I've come to realize is that if you want to build a life that you want, if you want to build confidence in yourself, you have to decide at the moment of your decision.

22:48You have two choices. You decide easy or you decide hard. If you decide hard, you will start to build confidence. Even if you don't see immediate success, confidence is very underestimated. People think, oh, I can only be confident when I, you know, make$100 ,000 a year or become a million or whatever it might be. No, confidence doesn't come from that. Confidence comes from you showing up for yourself and making the hard choices every single day, deciding to get off of Instagram and read instead, deciding to go to the gym instead of sitting around on your couch, deciding to make cold calls versus watching Netflix.

23:20When you make those hard decisions, you have to realize, number one, you're building massive amounts of confidence for yourself. And number two, you're building a life that your future self is going to love and thank you for. and that is how you master taking action and realizing your decisions are extremely important in everything that you do. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on your Instagram stories and tag me in it. Rob Dial Jr., R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. I love seeing you guys share this all the time. And then once again, if you love this podcast, you'll also love my book, 17 Years of Working on Myself and Working with Other People, put into 256 pages.