#1588 - How Do You Make Your Decisions?

For episode number one thousand five hundred eighty eight , we're gonna hit you with a quick one how do you make your decisions ? I Was talking to somebody recently I don't remember where it was , but we were talking about making decisions and they said have you always made decisions the way you make decisions today ?

And I said absolutely no , no , no , no , no , no , no . For most of my life , I have been a very emotional decision maker . I remember you and I were in the studio one time , alan and we were having a conversation and this was the first time we had ever connected this . I Would often say that I feel , I feel like .

I feel like you know , I really feel like , and you would always say I think , I really think when I think about it . And we got to the point where I remember us having a conversation around the fact that I made most of my decisions based on emotion . You made most of your decisions based on logic .

So that's really what I want to talk about today in this quick episode . How do you make your decisions ? Are you making decisions emotionally or are you making decisions logically ?

There is an upside of both . There is a downside of both . The upside of making decisions Emotionally is you'll most likely please a lot of the people in your life yeah , a lot of the people in your life in your life , the downside is it's very hard to do something consistently for a long period of time . Little laugh , break , lock it up .

I'm trying lock it up , you good it's locked .

That's when people's feelings get hurt , because you're making decisions based on logic and not emotion . The other potential downside we broke out laughing when I was saying this before .

But one of the reasons I think it's so hard to Stay consistent is because when you're an emotional decision maker , when you're maybe an emotional thinker On the day-to-day , there is no reason to do it Emotionally it feels bad and it kind of sucks and it doesn't feel like we're making progress anyway .

Logically in your mind and you could speak to this way better than I but logically it's like well , this is the only way to succeed anyway , and this is just what we have to do , regardless of feeling or whatever it is . I don't want to make either of these wrong . I don't want to say either of these is Putting you in trouble .

I just want to talk about the potential upsides and downsides of both and here's really what Landed for me . When I had that conversation with that person , I said I am way more of a logical thinker than I've ever been , but I started out as a very emotional thinker , as an emotional decision-maker , which I think really really helps me with people .

So I try to leverage the positive of being an emotional decision-maker with the positive of being a logical decision-maker and try to get rid of as many of the negatives as possible .

good way to think about this is ready and lefty . So Kev was definitely more emotionally intelligent than I was and I was definitely more rational and logical and long-term strategic thinking and we've kind of driven to five and and

he was always better at relationships and friendships and people like him , that kind of thing . I was always better at business and success and and that kind of thing , and we we both were decent at both .

So it's not like we were terrible , but you know , I was much stronger than one than the other and what I've come to understand and there's so many ways you can slice this too it's like inner work . Are you better at inner work or are you better at understanding the economy and how it works and skills and corporate and that kind of thing ?

And so I Think of it as IQ and EQ . It's a simple way to think about

it . Eq is emotional intelligence , emotional adaptability , emotional Do you understand your emotions ? You know how you're feeling ? Do you know why you're feeling that way ? Do you understand what triggers you ? Do you ? Is it self-awareness ? How well do you know yourself ? Okay , that's the EQ side , and I didn't have a lot of that .

Honestly , in hindsight , I think I was kind of poor in that regard , but I understood how the economy worked and I understood how business works and I had a good resume and I , you know , I kind of joke . It's like if you're high on the Logical and rational side , you probably have a LinkedIn . I Remember Kevin and I argued about this early on .

I was like , dude , everyone has a LinkedIn . He was like , no , they don't . You know , if I had heard what are you talking about ? That point , yeah .

But emotionally driven people versus More logic , rationality , and so I used to , and I'll be playful with this , but when I go on other shows and I talk about my speaking career , for lack of better phrasing , I said I used to think I was a strong speaker , and I'm not saying that , putting myself down like I'm not a strong speaker .

I am not nearly as strong of a speaker as I thought I used to be , for if I'm speaking to a group of engineers , I actually think I'm very good . I've come to realize because Kevin has knocked it out of the park and Connected with way more audiences , way better than I did , and I thought I was a stronger speaker than he was .

And Then I started to realize all of the audiences love him and they don't like my speech , and I never understood why , because I thought mine was more valuable . I'm not , you know , and it turns out they're emotionally driven and I'm not connecting . I'm not connecting well . So at the end of the day , everyone is one of two types .

Okay , you are either a Emotional being who also thinks , or you are a thinking being who also has emotions . I Am a thinking being who also has emotions . So if you resonate more with me , you most likely are on the more rational , strategic , long-term thinking chess player side .

If you resonate more with Kev , which is more likely based on our community , you most likely make your decisions emotionally . And the cool part about this is because Kevin and I have worked together for so long .

We've learned so much from each other , and Now we kind of know the strengths and weaknesses of both sides , so we can mitigate the weaknesses while amplifying the strengths . And so there's no right or wrong here . There's just right ear lefty , and the goal is to become more ambidextrous and more holistic .

I Was hanging out with a couple of my friends and we were waiting on a Mike Tyson boxing match and we were playing chess and I was running it . So I do some chess stuff too . Thank you Nice . Yeah , I Could probably take you maybe .

make me look by a pasty member .

to Kevin and he learned a lot . It was really cool because it's all based on constraint theory and chaos theory and decision-making paradigms . It's it's awesome . It's awesome book , but it's also really challenging book . As a computer engineer , I kind of already understood and studied all those concepts , game theory also . But a lot of people don't think that way .

And so Kevin was like , dude , do you think like this ? And I genuinely , from a genuine place , as arrogant as it might sounds , I was like , do you not ? Because this was back in the early days when I didn't understand the differences . I did not get it . And and so , kev , what was your experience with algorithms to live by ?

And I said I don't know years , maybe ever . I don't know if I've ever played Guess who . And when we started playing Guess who , I was like oh my goodness , I can use some logic here . Let me count how many are men , how many are women ? All right , well , it's different . There's like 60 , 40 . All right , cool .

So if I ask is your person a man , I'm already off to a head start because I'm gonna eliminate 60% of the people . Awesome , so I was just able to use logic versus just asking random questions . Now , I know that's a silly .

Again , that's kind of a silly example , but that's a really good example of logic versus just emotionally saying I don't know , I don't know , is your person attractive ? You think your person's attractive ? Or versus saying logically . Let me break down the numbers . Okay , there's 20 people X amount , or this X amount , or that X amount or that .

What are the highest likelihoods of me getting a good piece of information ?

It sounds intense , but it's really cool and it's really simple . Take your top three core values and then rate them from zero to 10 . So maybe for me , legacy is 10 , humility is eight and mastery is nine . Okay , that's where you make your decisions from . So when we bought this house , before we bought this house , she said what's important to you in a house ?

And I said , good , wifi close to the gym . That was it . That was as much as I had , and she had all this cool stuff . She had cathedral ceilings and skylights and it has to have a garage and , by the way , thank goodness , because I live in a shack or anything . You live in a gym .

You live in a gym and when we do get another home because we're already dreaming about our next home I'm gonna have way more . I was pulling out of the garage in her Tesla recently and I said , well , you're gonna need a bigger garage . This garage is like tight , it's too tight , not big enough . We have a lot of crap .

Honestly , we gotta get rid of some of our crap seriously . But anyways , the point is , is we need a bigger garage ? I didn't even care about garage , but back then I love skylights . Now I get to see the stars every night . I'm spoiled these days , great . But anyways , she knew more about houses . She was in real estate .

Her family owns a lot of real estate . She's been growing up around homes and understanding the difference

between . You know Wayne's coding and all that stuff . I don't know For me , countertop , countertop , marble countertop , regular countertop , whatever . Like I know food , right , I know certain things really well . So anyways , my point is what is your decision-making paradigm ? And a cost value analysis is what do you value ? What are your core values ?

If you value family , you need to make your decisions based on that . Is this what's best for my family ? If you value your career and you value money . You've got to make decisions based on that , and so there's a logic to all of this .

But at the end of the day , if you are naturally emotionally driven , you probably can work on the logic , whereas I have to be the opposite . I'm working on emotional intelligence and I often joke . But if you want , I had dozens of coaches and mentors . What I really needed was a therapist . People who have therapists have had a therapist in his 20s .

He actually needed coaches and mentors , and so what you want isn't always what you need , because we're already , are lefty , and we all have this tendency of wanting to stay good at what we're already good at .

That can be a heavy realization of like , do you always make your decisions like this ? I remember we were in California for an event and I was like dude , we should just go get like a nice dinner tonight , just like to visualize what that would be like .

You know we're on the West Coast , the Pacific Coast Highway , let's go to fancy dinner and you're like that's the dumbest shit I've ever heard in my life . Like why ?

Shout out to anybody who lives in California near the Pacific Coast Highway I am truly envious of you . All right , we gotta go Tomorrow for episode number 1589, . Alan , I bumped this one up for you so you'll be happy .

The two types of self-belief this is something that Alan and Bianca and Emilia were talking about , I believe , so we're gonna do an episode on that tomorrow . As always , we love you , we appreciate you , grateful for each and every one of you and an NLU . We do not have fans , we have family . We'll talk to you all tomorrow .