How to Make Difficult Decisions in 6 Simple Steps

it's one of the things that we teach in Limitless is uh as six thinking hats it's uh created by Edward de Bono and it's this idea that if you are facing a decision or difficulty or a dilemma in your life one of the reasons why we can't always think our way out of something is because we see something from a set point of view and what six thinking hats does it gives you permission to step out of yourself and try on another lens meaning imagine this table here has six color hats right yeah and I want everybody to think about who's listening or watching this right now a decision you need to make or difficulty doesn't have to be like life and death but it's just something that you know that where to live I'm thinking about that's perfect where to live and then you have these hats so the first hat is the white hat I mean no specific order so imagine you're reaching out and you're putting on the white hat okay right and the white hat and I'll give you a mnemonic because I'm the memory guide to help you remember remember what each one symbolizes the white hat imagine a white scientist's lab coat like a white lab coat that's data that's information that's facts right so now you could only look at the situation or this decision tree through the ACT Through The Eyes of logic okay so I'm doing that now so me and my partner are actually looking for someone to live at the moment and we're we've been looking it was really about which area to live in in London or maybe we'll live in Portugal or maybe Dubai so we're kind of trying to figure that out okay so I've got my white hat on and my lab coat and I can only think about logic so price I'm thinking about is it a good time to buy what's the graph saying I'm thinking about renting versus buying commute and travel and amenities that are her thought yeah that would be all the factual and then so you could take off the white hat and now look for the red hat so you grab the red hat you put it on and the red hat is a symbolizes heart is emotions so this is where you're going more with your gut you're feeling you're putting logic aside and just like what what feels right for you her family lives in Portugal so that's the first thing that came to mind when you said about feelings and being close to family yeah absolutely and this is this is good I hope everyone's doing this also so you take off the red hat and you could put on let's say the the black hat and the black hat think of a judge's robe and the judge's robe this is where you get a little bit you could be judgmental you could look at the the risk or the or the uh The Devil's Advocate you could look at the the other side you know in terms of what could go wrong you know like you might hate living there you know you know the places we're considering we've never lived in before so what if we buy a place and then we immediately don't like it maybe we should stay where we are not by anywhere the housing market will collapse and it'll be such a bad investment that will will regret it so you're shining a spotlight so the idea here is that the information is out there but where are we choosing to put a spotlight and acknowledge and be aware of so you could take off the Black Cat and we're doing this abbreviated right and then uh look for like the Yellow Hat you put on the yellow hat and the yellow is like the sun and that's like optimism and this is like all the things opposite of the the black cat going wrong what could go right like the upside and even you know and even all those things are just named we'll figure it out yeah we'll figure it out if we live there we can always move somewhere else and um we'll make it work and Dubai's lovely it's hot yeah so is Portugal nice and those are four hats and the last two take off the yellow hat and find their green hat and so you put on the green hat and the green is possibility it's like New Growth if you look at the plants that are green imagine new new foliage new new growth and these are like maybe thinking outside the box like maybe it's not I go to you know I go to this job or this job maybe it's I go back to school or maybe it's something I'm not entertaining so that's possibility so that would be in the context of me moving house what is that that's yeah the possibility of so if it was like between this and this it could be like a choice three or twice four or third option so maybe we'll try America or we'll try another place to live in the world or um maybe we'll just Airbnb in all these places and we can live in all of them yeah okay so that would be green and then finally the last hat so it could be done in any order but the blue hat is always you end with so put on the blue hat and the blue imagine the sky overlooking everything it's kind of like the uh the manager Hut it listens to all the conversations with all the other color hats and then it helps you make a decision because it informs because here's the thing you can only make decisions based on what's in your conscious awareness and so many people live with a certain hat on like 24 7. they are just that logical facts prove it to me and they see through a certain lens but if they're not you know looking at the emotional context or other possibilities or with the downside of you know Branson's very good at that right he's very good at looking at everyone looks at him as very very risk you know like you know do all these crazy things but he's you know you have conversations with him he looks at like from the blackout look in terms of risk management right and and many getting the downside and so like but if you just looked at everything through the Yellow Hat investing optimistic you think everything's in the Bitcoin everything's going to be good and you go on that and you're ignoring the other points of view and so this allows you to have more information and so hopefully with that more information you can make a more a wiser Choice with something and that's kind of you literally recommend people in chapter 15 of this book to buy multi-colored hats this is um if you wanted to be able to do that we could do this we do this with our team where we'll go through with our team and say either one of two things as a team building exercise or like we're facing this you know initiative we're launching a new book or we're doing this whatever like a social media challenge or whatever and we'll have people like everyone put on the same color hat metaphorically like literally physically go like this and put it as if you know so they get their body into it also and we're all looking at it through the same point of view or we'll assign different hats for different people and we'll have this big kind of you know court case and conversation and now the rule is you have to talk as if you're from that you know point of view and that allows us to get outside of ourselves it's similar to Innovation where there's a there's a book called the structure of Scientific Revolution it's not not really fun read but the the essence of it is a lot of innovation uh and progress comes from people outside of that industry because it takes somebody from the outside to have a different lens or hat to that didn't have the same learned helplessness and taught the same limitations of how things should have been done so maybe an Elon outside saying well if we're gonna make a car today with today's technology how would we go about doing that instead of doing just incremental improvements on you know what they have existing right and I think you ask a new question and you get a new answer and part of these you know 60 000 thoughts we have a lot of them are informal questions but all those questions getting a shining a light we have something called our reticular activating system which we talk about a lot that the brain primarily is a deletion device deletion deletion is where we're trying to keep information out yeah like because if we let everything in overload yeah of course that'd be that way and you'd be stressed right and so we're primarily but what we let in we have part of our nervous system called the RAS that determines this is important to us so if you're going around in the city and somebody shouts out your name you're going to turn around even if you know logically you don't know that person but you're wired your Ras is wired for your name right because and think about how it got there it's probably one of the first words you learned how to be able to write and and say and and how much praise you I mean how much love is associated to be able to your identity around a name but also what also helps us to channel our Ras in terms of our Focus are the questions we ask

Channel: Jim Kwik

Views: 52,303

Keywords: how to make decisions, jim kwik, make difficult decisions, how to make tough decisions, tough decisions, decision making tips, decision making process, decision making, how to decide, 6 thinking hats demonstration, 6 thinking hats examples, 6 thinking hats technique, 6 thinking hats example situation

Id: yAYRJA8mZNc

Length: 8min 30sec (510 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 29 2023