How to Make Good Choices Every Time

Have you ever had the feeling that you did not know what you were doing? I mean, have you ever been in a situation where you thought, wow, I am just not sure what to do in this next situation? Well, I think all of us have. And on today's podcast, I'm going to share with you exactly what to do about that situation.

Welcome to becoming wiser with Dr. Robert A. Will, author and world renowned public speaker, as he shares stories involving his experiences and lessons learned in a good spirited, positive and fun way. Here's Dr. Robert A. Rohm.

Hi, I'm Dr. Robert Rohlm and one of the most important things all of us will ever learn how to do is to make good, wise, healthy, wholesome decisions. And that is not always easy to do. I once heard a friend of mine say, God has never made anyone who knows how to make right decisions, but he has made people who know how to make good decisions and then make them right. I believe there's a lot of wisdom in that concept because no one knows how to make a perfect decision. I mean, after all, you might have all the facts, you might have all the information, you might have everything you need at your fingertips and then you realize, I didn't see that coming or something else could possibly go wrong. The truth of the matter is there are some helpful hints and techniques and I'm going to share them with you on this podcast as to how to make good, healthy decisions. Now remember, let's go back to what I just said. There is no one on the planet who knows how to make a right decision all the time. I mean, you might make a decision and it might be the best decision, it might be the most right, obvious decision, and then something happened that you weren't expecting. So I want to shift the conversation, I want to move it to a different way of thinking about decision making. Once you make a decision, then as I mentioned earlier, you try to make it right. But there has to be something that takes place before that. So again, if this seems a little bit confusing, I'm going to walk you through it to show you how to do this in the best way possible. So let's get started. Let's say you have to make a decision about something and you're not sure what to do. Here is the guiding light for the whole podcast. Here's the guiding light for decision making. And here's the guiding light for the rest of your life. Are you ready? Here it is. Just do the next right thing. You see, when you do the next right thing, you have nothing to worry about. If things go well, then you can pat yourself on the back and say, man, that was so good that I made the right decision. Everything turned out well. But if you make the right decision and things turn out wrong, you can say, I learned a good lesson. You don't have to go back and clean up the fact that you were being deceitful or dishonest or trying to hide something. You were transparent, you thought it through and you did the next right thing and it didn't turn out like you thought it would. Well, that's okay. You can say, I learned a good lesson. I developed some wisdom that I'll be able to use in the future. You see, that's the guiding light. The guiding light is I'm not trying to hide something. I'm not trying to be deceitful or dishonest. I'm going to make and do the next right thing. When I do the next right thing or I follow the thinking of I'm just going to do the next right thing, then I can trust and feel good that my decision will lead me to either success or it will lead me to learning how to do something better in the future. Now, let me give you a couple of examples to show you how this works on a daily basis. Let's suppose you want to learn how to make good decisions. Let's suppose. Suppose you want to learn how to be a better leader. Here's the first thing I would encourage you to do. Find someone that you admire, that you like, that you learn from, and watch them. It may be a coach, it may be a parent, it may be a teacher. It may be someone in your circle that you listen to, that you learn from and you think to yourself, I want to be more like them. Well, what is it about them you want to be more like? It probably has nothing to do with the way they comb their hair. It probably has nothing to do with their clothes or how wealthy they are or even their position in life. It probably is the fact they show respect, that they are hungry to learn themselves, that they have a kind, gracious attitude, that they understand that something needs to be done and they want to do something about it. In other words, they want to be a difference maker. There are 101 other things that you can look at at other people and think, well, like that I wish I could be more like them. Well, what is it that about them you want to be more like? Is it the fact that they smile? That's a great one. Is it the fact that they're courteous Is it the fact they don't butt in on other people while someone's talking to them? Is it the fact they think things through and are level headed? I have discovered almost every great character trait that I want to have is because I see it in someone else. So that becomes a huge guiding light. Look for traits that you see in other people that you admire, that you want to have yourself, and then model it. Take what they showed you, how they modeled it, and then you model it within yourself. I know someone who walks in the room and they walk in the room, they will greet other people, they'll say, how are you doing? How's your family? Good to see you. I learned from watching that being interested in other people and asking questions to other people is a great way to connect with people. If you, you can walk up to a total stranger and say, you know, I was just noticing the way you carry yourself. You seem to be so positive and sure about yourself. How'd you learn how to do that? Listen to what they tell you. Everyone wants to talk about their favorite subject, which is basically themselves. When you meet someone and say, you know, I really like the way you smile. I like the way you seem to be so encouraging of other people, how did you learn how to do that? Find every characteristic, every trait that you want to have in your life that you like in other people and simply learn to emulate those traits. One of my greatest mentors, oh, I'll never forget, he said something one day that just really cost me to stop and think about how this works. And that great mentor was my father. And he looked at me one day when I was going on and on about something and he said something that just forever changed my life. He looked at me and paused for just a second till I got finished going on and on and on and on and on, and then said.

It'S okay to disagree.

It's just not okay to be disagreeable.

Wow. It's okay to disagree. I was disagreeing with something my father said, but he gently told me, it's not okay to be disagreeable. I think about when you talking to someone and you have a disagreement and the two of you are able to discuss it, to remain civil, to listen, to be kind and helpful to each other and share your thoughts, both of you walk away a little bit better. But when you have a disagreeable attitude and you're communicating well, I don't care what you say, I'm right and I don't like you anymore because you don't agree with me. That does no one any good. It's okay to disagree. It's not okay to be disagreeable. See, I learned that for someone who taught me, who mentored me. Another thing my father said to me one time was, you need to learn to be a fish. I thought, be a fish. And I said, what does that mean? He said, a fish wouldn't have any trouble if he could learn to keep his mouth shut. You know, every fish that ever got caught, it started with him opening his mouth. If he hadn't opened his mouth and got on that hook, he could have swam away and had another day of life. But no, he had opened his mouth and then he became someone's dinner. Well, being a little silly, they're a little humorous. The point I'm trying to make is this. It's so valuable to learn you don't have to say something about everything. You can learn to keep your mouth shut. So again, I told you there were two things. One is learn to see it in others and model it. But I saved the best point of this entire podcast for this last thought. I hope you're listening because it's going to take me to develop. This is more than a sentence. This is a concept. Are you aware? Get ready. No one on earth knows what they're doing all the time. Let me say it another way. If you see the greatest leader who runs the greatest company in all of the world, they would tell you, I don't know what I'm doing all the time. I remember hearing and seeing Steve Jobs, who created a trillion dollar company we call Apple. He said, I had to come to the place of realizing I didn't know what I was doing. They questioned and they sent out a survey, the top 500 CEOs in America. And they asked them, what is your biggest fear? The answer that came back more than any other one was, I'm afraid I'm going to get found out that I don't know what I'm doing. Now listen carefully. I'm not talking about they're stupid. I'm not talking about they're ignorant. I'm not talking about the fact that they don't have a clue what's going on. It's. They are still in the process of learning how to do their job. How do they do their job every day? I can tell you, they do the next right thing. They think things through. They're not trying to make a perfect decision. There's a big difference between perfection and excellence. They're trying to make an excellent decision based on all the Facts that they currently have at that moment. And then they do the next right thing. And if they find out it worked, good for them, yay, we're making progress. If they found out it didn't work, well, at least we're not being unethical. We thought that would work and we found out it didn't work and we learned a good lesson and we won't try that again. And we learned from our mistakes. Hear me well. I'm going to say it again. No one knows what they're doing. No one on this planet 100% of the time knows what they're doing. This is a great message for young people. If you're young, you and you look up to those of us who are older. I'm 75 years old. I've spent a lifetime learning being involved in education, business ministry, sports training, coaching, running businesses, traveling around the world. I have no idea what I'm doing except everything is working great. I'm financially free, I have no debt, my business is growing, I have wonderful friends, I have the best marriage in the world. I just. Life is so good, I can hardly believe it. How did I produce that answer? I didn't. I just kept making good decisions. Wait a minute. I thought you said nobody knows how to make good decisions. Here's how you make decisions. Just do the next right thing. You see, if you do the next right thing, that's the good decision that you're trying to make. That's what you're trying to do. So you look at all your options and you think, if everybody were looking over my shoulder, if my mom or my dad or my brother or sister, my boss was looking at me right now, would I be making good decision? Would I be doing the next right thing? Hear me well, friend, if you do the next right thing, you can live with yourself. You can always know. I just did the next right thing and it turned out really great. I just did the next right thing and it turned out to be a mess. But boy, did I learn a good lesson from it. And I'll do better next time. Everybody will accept that because that's the plan of life. Life is not a heat seeking missile situation where you go from point A to point B like a heat seeking missile. Life is a sailboat ride. Like tacking. You go to the left and then you turn and go to the right. And then you turn and go to the left and you turn and go to the right. And you learn as you go and you go as you learn. So again, let's wrap all this up. This is about decision making. This is about being smart. This is about being successful. God never made a person who knows how to make a right decision, but he knows he has made people who know how to make good decisions. Doing the next right thing and then make them right. And if you succeeded in what you decided, good for you. You're staying on track to move and make the next right decision. And, and you'll keep doing that all through life. Listen, if you mess up and you have to eat crow, it's always best to eat it while it's still warm. Cold crow is not as good as warm crow. Just say, hey, I messed up. That was wrong. I made, I thought I was making the right decision. I did do the best I could. I ended up. It was a bad decision, but I learned from it and I'll do better next time. For all of you who are younger than 75, and I'm saying this probably for anybody who's older than 75 too, if you look at anybody who's successful, whoever it is, in any endeavor, whether, regardless of what line of work they're in, if they will tell you, you know, I don't know what I'm doing all the time, but I'm succeeding by doing the next right thing and then learning from my decisions. See, who are the other people you want to be like? They're modeling it, follow their lead. That's how they're learning to be someone you look up to and you want to be like, realize that whether you're the President United States or president of IBM or General Motors or Apple Computer, they don't know what they're doing. They're trying their best to make wise decisions. They're trying to make good decisions. They're to trying. They're trying to do the next right thing. And then that's how wisdom occurs. If you do the next right thing, you'll learn from it, you'll grow from it, and you'll become the person I promise you that you want to be in life. It's worked for me and thousands of others that I know. Let that become your daily mantra. I just want to do the next right thing. I can't make perfect decisions. I can't make 100% successful decisions that I can make a good decision doing the next right thing and I'll learn from it and grow through it. That's the way it works. That's the way you end up successful. I'm Dr. Robert Rome. I hope this has been helpful. Listen to it. Five or six times. Maybe it'll sink in and you'll become the person that I know you can be. Look forward to our next podcast together. Have a great day. God bless you. Bye. Bye.

For more information about this podcast, please visit www.becoming wiser podcast.

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