GOOD DECISIONS LEAD TO A GOOD LIFE
THE NUMBER ONE PROCESS FOR HAPPINESS
WHAT PRODUCES GOOD RESULTS
There seems to be some confusion about "what produces good results."
Is it "learning from life"? Is it serendipity? Is it intuition, gut feel? Is it learning from other people, who might not be experts either?
If we clarify this, then we can set rules and ways to produce the results we truly want in life.
Now, this may appear to be a bit of a "duh!" conclusion, that is so obvious, but I underline this here because so many people tend to not honor this.
There is no magic involved here. In fact, if there appears to be magic, then that is a possible indication that it is not valid. (Such as people believing they can "think" things into existence, and get results without having to go through the necessary action steps and learning. Many people misconstrue, or it is mistaught, the "Law Of Attraction". Yes, we all want shortcuts, but they most often do not work.)
IT'S ABOUT WHAT WORKS, NOT ABOUT "THE RIGHT PROCESS"
The only thing that works is using what is sometimes called "The Scientific Method". It is simply making sure you have good facts and then being sure you have sound reasoning - not too difficult - and anyone with a normal brain can do it easily.
But we are not implementing a good process just to do a good process. We are implementing this to produce good results in what really matters in life.
Of course, we must use our judgment here. It is important to realize that some things need less rigor, but that the more important things need more rigor. And some things are so important that they deserve the utmost in rigor (key life decisions: character, values, career, mate, key behaviors, health...). Indeed, where it is more important we do not want to make needless mistakes; instead, we want to follow the Carpenter's Rule: Measure twice, cut once.
If you have a process that works better, please propose it!
SEQUENCE AND COMPONENTS OF GETTING WHAT YOU WANT
This is a simple diagram of how it looks.
Follow the arrows (up) and see if you agree with this, as a must do sequence of steps to get to what we want.
HAPPINESS, SATISFACTION
↑
GOOD RESULTS (DESIRED RESULTS)
↑
GOOD IMPLEMENTATION (PLANNING FIRST)
↑
GOOD DECISIONS
↑
GOOD DECISION PROCESS
(Test: Confident have sufficient facts and sufficient thinking?)
↑
GOOD REASONING (LOGIC)
↑
GOOD FACTS
↑
WHAT DO I WANT AND HOW DO I GET THERE?
WHAT DOESN'T WORK
Can you confidently get to where you want to be in life without the factors above? Without good facts and reality? Without sound reasoning (but with some method that has proven not to be reliable, like intuition or gut feel)?
People know this at some level, but there still use emotional reasoning, engage in the big Errors In Thinking (jumping to conclusion, extremizing, black and white thinking, etc.), partial, incomplete thinking.
People will often hang on to their original beliefs and defend them vigorously, believing that it is somehow a threat to them to find out they are not correct. They believe that they are "the truth", even though they have no sound basis for their conclusions.
People will somehow hang on to the belief that intuition is accurate and "somehow knowing" of the truth, when that is patently false. People will hold onto the belief that they know a fact when they are just supposing and assuming to fill in the gap of "not knowing". They think they perceive reality in situations where there is missing information or not seen information: "I can 'feel' it!" "I just know it." "I can tell from his tone!" (Actually that is called infering, and then believing the unseen as if it were the truth. A huge error in thinking.)
Needless to say (?), none of these are workable for getting the best results in life. Sure, we make mistakes, inevitably, and that's ok, but there is no point in incurring more mistakes needlessly through sloppy thinking or non-thinking.
The point here is to arrive at the conclusion that the diagrammed process is, in fact, the "formula" for creating what one wants in life and reaching true happiness - and that it is not serendepity, randomness of information, learning from less than knowledgeable others, partial facts, something out of the blue (the universe, intuition, etc.), esp, aliens, etc.
And the importance of arriving at that conclusion and agreeing on it is that we can then set up rules that we follow to make sure we are doing all of these appropriately to the situation and to what we want.
