Front Row Focus

One simple heuristic that people utilize automatically is that more is better. Mental shortcuts, or rules of thumb, that are used for making judgments and decisions. THINK ABOUT Imagine that you could win money by closing your eyes and picking a red marble from a jar filled with many colored marbles. Let's say you can choose to draw a marble from either a small jar with one red marble and nine marbles of other colors or from a large jar with 10 red marbles and 90 marbles of other colors. Which jar would you choose? Intuitively, it seems as if the chances are better with more possible winning marbles, even though statistically, and therefore rationally, this is not true: The chances of winning the money are equal for the two jars. Yet a large majority of people choose the large jar with 10 red marbles rather than the small jar with one, even when they recognize the equal odds of winning (Kirkpatrick & Epstein, 1992; How many entrepreneurs fail because they try to create several businesses at once or seek to offer too many services? How often do people keep reading article after article on a certain topic without obtaining the results they want? How many people jump from one diet to another without reaching their target weight? All these people fall for the Shiny Object Syndrome, giving up on an existing opportunity for a seemingly more exciting or promising one. Again, this has a great deal to do with people's inability to complete what they start, which results from several factors. In this section, we're going to work through each of these factors so you clearly understand the main reasons why you may fail to achieve the results you want in your life. Once you understand the importance of completing what you start, things can dramatically improve for you. Now, let's look at specific reasons you may fail to stay focused on your goals. A lack of awareness of how success works can lead people to feel stuck. For example, you may expect to achieve your goals quickly, but it turns out to be a longer and more tedious journey that requires more time and effort than you originally imagined. Remember that it's okay to make mistakes. In fact, making mistakes is mandatory when learning to build your courage muscles.

See any mistake as a sign to ask for help or move in a different direction. Change your mind. If you decide to take an action that suddenly doesn't feel right, trust yourself. Know your limitations and give yourself permission to change your mind. When in doubt, check it out. If you feel like your physical or emotional well-being may be at risk, check it out with someone you trust. Ask someone you feel is more courageous than you are for help. Give yourself a deadline. Risen, 2016). The marble-choice scenario helps us to see the intuitive appeal of heuristics, but it raises an important question: Do heuristics influence judgment when the real-world stakes are high? The answer is yes. For example, imagine that a deadly disease is threatening a small town of 600 people, and public health officials are considering two different treatment plans. If Treatment A is adopted, 200 lives will be saved. If Treatment B is adopted, there's a 1/3 probability that all 600 people will be saved and a 2/3 probability that no one will be saved. Which would you choose? If you are like most participants asked this question by the Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman and his collaborator, Amos Tversky (Tversky & Kahneman, 1981), you would probably choose Treatment A. But now consider the following version of the same problem: If Treatment A is adopted, 400 people will die. If Treatment B is adopted, there is a 1/3 probability that nobody will die and a 2/3 probability that all 600 people will die. When reality doesn't meet your expectations, it is easy to give up. Fortunately, once you understand how the goal achievement process works, you can make the correct decisions and increase your odds of reaching your goals.

To learn how success works in greater depth, I invite you to read my article, Success is Inevitable. Do you have the right strategy for success? Are you focusing on what moves the needle? No matter how productive and disciplined you may be, if you work on the wrong things, you will not achieve the results you're after. An effective way to avoid distraction is to spend enough time planning, while making sure you have the proper strategy in place. Here is a simple approach: Find someone who has achieved the same results you want, making sure it is someone you can relate to and trust. This person should walk the talk. Don't confuse planning with acting. To really move forward in your life you'll need to set a by when date and stick to it! Be accountable. Ask your partner or team to hold you accountable for your commitments. Being challenged by others can provide instant inspiration and motivation. Let's put it together: My support person will be_____ The five past successes I will call upon for courage are: My courage talisman will be_____ Ready, set, go! Would you now prefer Treatment B? If you take a close look at these two framings of the issue, they are statistically identical choices.

But people's preferences change dramatically when they are cued to think about what would be lost compared with what might be gained. When the question is framed the second way, in terms of lives lost, the majority of people prefer to take the chance with Treatment B, where there is some chance of avoiding any loss of life. Our experiential minds are more readily swayed by thinking about what we might lose than by thinking about what we might gain. It takes a much closer and more rational consideration of the odds to realize that these choices are the same. APPLICATION Two Routes to Engaging in Risky Health Behavior If adolescents' experiential system associates smoking as something that is cool, they are more likely to try it, even if they are consciously aware of the dangers. Dual process theories have enabled us to understand a number of important decisions that people make, including those that affect their physical health. The decision, for example, to engage in risky behavior such as smoking or unprotected sex can be influenced by our conscious intentions (No way would I have unprotected sex! Discover how they got there. What blueprint did they follow? What beliefs did they have? What habits did they implement? If possible, interview them and ask them what they would do if they had to start all over again. If they offer a course, buy it. Apply everything in the course until you get some results or follow the blueprint you've identified. When you fail to achieve tangible results, revisit the course one more time until you master everything in it or revise your blueprint. Resist the temptation to buy another course. Learn less stuff but delve deeper into it. Play the Face Your Fear game so you can say yes to your life! From now on, when you feel afraid, get excited!

See it as an amazing opportunity to build the kind of courage muscles that will allow you to make your greatest contribution to the world! Courage: The Heart and Spirit of Every Woman: Reclaiming the Forgotten Virtue by Sandra Ford Walston (Broadway articles, 2001) This article shows women, their daughters, friends, and the men who support them how to reclaim their forgotten birthright and live more fully from their hearts and spirits. Women of Courage: Inspiring Stories From the Women Who Lived Them by Katherine Martin (New World Library, 1999) Forty women describe life-altering moments in which they had to rely on their own inner resources to conquer challenges and find strength and wisdom. Still I Rise by Maya Angelou (Random House, 2001) Maya Angelou celebrates the courage of the human spirit over the This poem is a tribute to the power that resides in us all to overcome the most difficult circumstances. Because the experiential system learned to associate those behaviors with attractive images (Gerrard et al. For example, if adolescents' experiential system associates smokers with a cool rebel image, they are more willing to try smoking when the opportunity arises, even if they consciously report having little intention of lighting up (Gerrard et al. Implicit and Explicit Attitudes Attitudes are emotional reactions to people, objects, and ideas. If we have two systems for thinking, does that mean we have two ways of evaluating something as good or bad? The answer is yes, according to dual process theories of attitudes (Gawronski & Bodenhausen, 2006; Nosek, 2007). According to these theories, implicit attitudes are based on automatic associations that make up the experiential system. Some automatic associations can be passed on genetically through evolution (such as an automatic fear response to snakes; Ohman & Mineka, 2003), but most are learned from our culture (such as a negative attitude toward eating pork or fried ants). This is how you will achieve great results in the long term. People want to become a millionaire in thirty days, lose fifty pounds in a week, or attract the ideal partner quickly and effortlessly.