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Gold Medal Decision Strategies

by Arman Darini, Ph.D.

January 10, 2006

Glad to be speaking with you again. Last week I promised that today I would describe Men's Cycles of Development and would recommend you a book that will change your relationships forever. I've decided to postpone that topic until the next week, and invest this time today into wrapping up extraordinary decision making by taking a close look at something you probably never even thought about before.

In the last two Tips we studied a step by step process for extraordinary decision making, and learned about several common and deadly decision traps. This material has been mostly based on experimental research drawn from classical psychology. Today it is time to add some NLP magic to your decision making by examining your decision strategies.

I have a friend. She is a woman, and she likes to shop (crazy, eh?) Whenever she enters a store, say a shoe store, here is what goes on in her mind:

1. Look around and notice which shoes look visually appealing.
2. Approach the most appealing shoes and feel them with her hands.
3. Put the shoes on, wear them for 10 minutes to feel how they sit on her feet.
4. See how the shoes look on her feet in the mirror.
5. Look at the price tag.
6. Ask inside her mind: "Do I really need these?"
7. Imagine herself wearing the shoes in ten different contexts.
8. Purchase the shoes.

This is how she ALWAYS shops for shoes, and she HAS to go through each and every step in this specific sequence to buy the shoes (with several exceptions that I will describe shortly). After every step if she doesn't continue to feel good about the shoes, she quits the process. This process is called a decision strategy, and it's very important and pervasive in her life. With slight modifications, this is how she shops for clothes, cars and boyfriends (in San Francisco we have a boyfriends supermarket).

A million dollar question for you: Can you predict based on her decision strategy alone, whether she is a fast or a slow shopper? How often do you think she returns her shoes back to the store?

My friend is a slow shopper who rarely returns her purchases back to the store. She is a slow shopper because her shoe buying efforts are undirected - most of the time she's open to buying shoes of any kind - and so she has to consider all the ones on the rack. She rarely returns her purchases because she makes sure she is happy with all three criteria (looks, feels, costs) before buying the shoes. Except...

Sometimes her buying strategy short-circuits: she sees shoes so beautiful or she is so pressed for time that she buys the shoes immediately, without imagining herself wearing them in ten different contexts (step 7). In these cases she returns half of her purchases back to the store, because she doesn't know when to wear them! So the lesson to my friend is to stop wasting her time returning shoes (or other purchases) by always using her full decision strategy.

Take a look at this shoe buying decision strategy from another friend of mine:

1. Hold a clear picture of a previously owned pair of shoes in mind.
2. Find that pair of shoes.
3. Buy that pair of shoes.

Can you tell if this is a man or a woman? This friend is a lighteningly fast shopper, and only buys shoes that he has already owned. He doesn't experiment with shoes and buying a new type of shoes is a major headache for him. Why? Because when he buys a new type of shoes, he still uses this same decision strategy: he finds a new pair of shoes that is similar to his mental image and buys it. And almost always it's uncomfortable, - of course, he never tried them on! What's striking is that he's much the same way when it comes to clothes or cars. The lesson for him is that it is easy to buy new types of shoes as long as he wears them for 10 minutes in the store.

The lesson for you is that your decision strategies completely determine the quality of your decisions, and hence the quality of your life. I insist that you invest a little time into understanding and improving your own - it can make a major difference in your life.

How did you buy your last pair of shoes? How did you buy your watch? Your car? Is your decision strategy working for you? Are you a fast or a slow shopper? Reckless and impulsive, or thoughtful and careful? How often do you return your purchases back to the store? Find the relationship between that and your decision strategy. Then adapt your decision strategy to make it even better.

Decision strategies are one particular type of strategy. Strategies are very core to how we live. You have one for waking up, for being on time, for relaxing, for getting angry, for solving math problems, for thinking creatively. Just imagine how much more you could become and achieve if you learned the gold medal strategies for living. That's basically what NLP is all about.

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