Time and energy are often wasted second-guessing ourselves. We'll look at lessons to be learned from a recent study done with monkey's at Yale. Listen to the show and read the summary here
The BIGG Successs Show
Get The Monkey Off Your Back
Welcome to our 14th big success show. Today we'll talk about getting the monkey off your bat. The big success show with George and Mary Lynn. Last time we talked about how to build your self-confidence. I'm pretty confident we did a good job. Hey now don't get cocky. Today we're going to talk about what can be learned from some recent research on monkeys. And George this is a big success exclusive we're very lucky to actually have one of those monkeys from that study here with us today. And he's named after that little rascals character spanky. Spanky all right I love spanky. Fortunately I'm well versed in monkey talk so I can interpret whatever he says. Spanky is pretty well behaved. Yeah he is. It's pretty quiet normally. So at Yale they did a study on the monkeys and they had them choose their three favorite colors out of a bag of M&Ms. And spanky what were the colors you chose? Spanky. I didn't understand a word he said man. Spanky city chose red green and blue. Oh okay. Favorite. I got you. Very festive spanky. Yeah. Then they took away the blue M&M and and made him choose. Spanky is not having a blue Christmas. Yes. And they made him choose between red and green. And you chose which color? Spanky chose green and rejected the red. Then what the investigators did was took away his green his favorite now and made him choose they brought back the blue and made him choose between blue and red. And what did you do spanky? That's right. He rejected the red once again. And chose blue. Now the overwhelming majority of the monkeys in this study did the very same thing. Once they had rejected a color they stuck with that. Even though at the very start they liked all three of their color picks equally. I just wonder what spanky has against red. Yes spanky what's the deal? Wait what did he say? I didn't understand that at all. He said of course he would choose green green M&Ms make you horny. Spanky's got it going on. Alright spanky. So basically what they learned out of the research is that even monkeys rationalize their decisions. And so there's three things we want to talk about today. And the first one is exactly that. As humans be aware of our instinct to rationalize. Right because when you're making a decision you might be rejecting an idea because you would reject it in the past. That's right. Or vice versa. Yep and so we want to make sure that past decisions aren't influencing current decisions in a bad way. Now we have a friend who once owned a business and unfortunately it wasn't successful but because of that he will never be a business owner again. And even his family and his friends rationalize that no you shouldn't do that because of what happened last time. But if you would honestly look at what happened and make adjustments in preparation for the next go around it could have a different outcome. Well as we've talked about before it's important to fail forward. So don't necessarily just push a side failure and not use it. Learn from it because it may better prepare you. And so understanding that we may rationalize or that we do rationalize can help us make better decisions today. Another thing to learn from the study is that if possible rationalize and move on. And move on. We waste so much time when we second guess. If you know buyers remorse, career decision remorse. There's all of these things that we'll do and then we'll think back and go oh if only I would have done this or done that. And all you're doing is wasting time. You can't change the decision that you made. You have to stick with it and make new decisions. And as we've talked about before also times precious got to use it productive. Oh George, no events this spanky here. But you know if only life were as simple as choosing your favorite M&M color. I mean obviously we're going to second guess ourselves because we make some complex decisions. And what if the decision that you made in the past is affecting you now? Well this is something that I guess isn't really talked about in the study. But the thing we can take away is if a decision you made in the past is affecting now. And I mean really affecting it, materially affecting it. Maybe it's credit card debt. Yeah perfect example. So something you know we've used our credit cards. We're maxed out. It's it's affecting our finances. Take action now. The sooner the better. If you need to do some research do it quickly and start taking action. In the case of credit cards A cut them off. I mean you'll stop using them. We get we get in spanky over and have them cut them up for you. There you go. So stop using them. B even if you have to get a part time job or whatever. Get them paid down. And three if you have to cut expenses cut back somewhere and get the debt paid down so that it's not affecting you. Take action today. Do whatever's necessary to get to the future that you want. Alright so let's review what we've learned from the monkey study. Today we talked about some monkeys. A whole barrel of monkeys I think. And spanky. We said rationalize if you can. Change it if you must. But move on. You can find a written summary of today's show on our blog at big success that's big with 2g success dot com and a special thanks to spanky for joining us today. And spanky we've got a bag of M&Ms that you can take home with you. I think spanky had his eye on the bananas. I know. Those are our spanky hands on. Green banana especially. Oh yeah. Alright let's get our big quote for the day before we go. Our quote today is by Ralph Washington Sockman the pastor and speaker who said. Let us not bankrupt our today's by paying interest on the regrets of yesterday and by borrowing in advance the troubles of tomorrow. Get past the monkey business of the past make today your day. On our next show we'll talk about some networking tips for this holiday season and all seasons. And until then here's to your big success. The big success show at B I G G success dot com. [BLANK_AUDIO]