The Two Choices in Front of You Might Both Be Wrong. Find a Third Option.

(Transcript edited for clarity.)

Hi, I'm Wes. Welcome to The Two Choices in Front of You Might Both Be Wrong. Find a Third Option.

This is one of the most fun topics I've put together in quite a while because I've had a lot of fun with this over the years after I learned that sometimes there is a third, fourth, or fifth option.

I've trained myself that every time I come to an important decision and my mind immediately tells me, "You've got two choices: this or this," I need to stop and see if there are actually other options.

Sometimes the best option is the third or fourth option.

It's not always either-or.

This is Your Life Systems.

We're going to talk about how the two choices in front of you might both be wrong and how to find a third option.

I'm going to start with a question for you:

What if the two choices in front of you aren't the only choices?

That's what you need to think every time you look at a choice and think it's either this or that.

You need to stop and ask: What if the two choices in front of me aren't the only choices?

I'm going to give you an example from my life.

Years ago, when I was in the affiliate business and building websites, I kept building websites, putting up more content, and getting more links because at the time that was the overriding process.

You put up content and got links.

That's how you ranked in the search engines.

That's how you got more traffic.

So the choices appeared to be: continue getting more links and putting up more content, or quit.

It appeared to be an either-or choice, and I struggled with this for months.

I'd try to get links.

I'd end up getting crappy links because the content I was putting up was not very good, but I didn't really know the difference at the time.

So I'd put up crappy content that nobody wanted to link to.

It wasn't good content, and I wasn't getting good links.

I struggled with this for months, and I was getting discouraged.

I thought, "I can either try harder, put up more cruddy content, and get more cruddy links, which is what everybody says to do - put up more content, get more links - or I can quit."

But I was fortunate.

I was quite a bit younger, and I found some other people who had a little more experience and were having some success.

I started learning from them.

I learned there were other options besides trying harder or quitting.

There was a third option.

There were actually many more.

What I found was that the third option was putting up better-quality content, which automatically attracted better-quality links.

So the first two choices looked like: keep doing what I was doing but try harder and do more, or quit.

Neither one of those was the true answer.

I could have quit and moved on to something else, but I would never have had any success that way.

When I found the third option - create better content - I had to see what pages were ranking and start comparing my pages to those.

That's when I found out it was a quality issue.

It wasn't a try-harder issue.

Putting up more content that wasn't good or even getting more links was not the answer.

The long-term answer was to emulate what others were doing.

They were putting up better content.

I learned how to create better content, and that solved the problem.

Better content solved the problem.

That was the third option.

Now think about anything you're working on right now in your life or business.

If you're struggling with something, or something isn't going as smoothly as it could, take a look at your choices, your options, or what you've been doing.

Find the places where you're thinking either-or.

Every time you find yourself saying, "I only have two choices. It's either this or that," take a step back and see if there's actually a third or fourth choice.

Often, once you see a third option, it opens your mind to seeing multiple other options.

We often frame decisions as either this or that.

Sometimes those really are the only choices.

Sometimes you truly have only two choices.

But sometimes the problem isn't choosing between choice one and choice two.

The problem is recognizing that choice three or choice four actually exists.

False choices - that's what I call many of these situations when we say it's either one or the other.

Often, they're false choices because there are other options.

False choices make problems feel more restrictive than they actually are.

I've experienced this many times, especially in business, but also in life and other areas of success.

You get so focused that it's like you've got blinders on, like they talk about with horses.

You can only see one or two things.

You can only see one goal or one path.

Your choice becomes either A or B.

You're so focused on that that you don't stop to think or look around for other options.

Stress and urgency can make this worse.

The more stressful the situation is, or the more urgent it feels, the more those blinders tighten.

We stay more focused on the narrow options.

A better thought process or a better framing of the problem can reveal solutions that were invisible while you had the blinders on.

So how do you get the blinders off?

That's really the question.

I said: What if the two choices in front of me aren't the only choices?

The way to answer that is to train yourself to get rid of the blinders and take a step back.

In my mind, what I do is stop and take a mental step back.

That's the trigger for me.

When I start saying, "It's either this or that," or I'm so focused I can't see anything else, my trigger is: Stop. Take a mental step back.

I try to stop thinking about the problem in the same way, take a mental step back, and look at the broader picture.

That's what I did when I talked about putting up lousy content and getting lousy links.

I took a step back and tried to see the broader picture.

The broader picture was that there were other people already doing what I wanted to do successfully.

They didn't necessarily know more than I did, but they had learned through experience or from other people's experience how to do it better than I was doing it.

When I took a step back and widened my view, I started seeing those things.

I saw people I knew who were having more success.

I saw how they were doing it.

Then it opened up other options.

So it's very important to pay attention any time you say, "It's either this or that," or, "I only have two choices."

Again, sometimes you will only have two choices.

Sometimes it really is either-or, A or B.

But often it's not.

Often you do have other choices or options.

That doesn't mean every other option is a good option or the right option.

Sometimes the third option is just as bad as the first two.

That doesn't mean you can't eventually find a better option.

Sometimes you'll find two, three, four, or five options and none of them are good.

Then you're going to have to pick the least bad option.

The important thing is to never get stuck in, "I've only got two options," unless you've removed the blinders and researched the other possible options.

What am I talking about here?

I'm talking mostly about important things you're working on where you get stuck.

Common decisions may only need two options.

You might have a good option from option one and option two.

You don't have to do this with everything you do.

Otherwise, you end up slowing down because you're thinking through everything too much.

It's the same thing as I've talked about with taking action.

Sometimes it's time to take action.

I'm not talking about common decisions or everyday decisions.

I'm talking about a powerful tool for when you're struggling with an important decision.

There might be a third option, and the third option might be a lot better than the two you're looking at.

A false choice might hide real alternatives.

When I say a false choice, I mean you say it's either this or that, but it's not really if you've got the blinders on.

The false choice is, "I either have to do A or I have to do B."

When that happens and you get those blinders where you can't see option C or D, those are false choices.

If you want to make the best choices on anything important you're working on, do what I do.

Tell yourself mentally: Stop. Take a mental step back. Broaden your view.

Try to get rid of the blinders so you can see all of your true options.

Before choosing between two options, ask whether those are really your only choices.

Ask it over and over again until you prove those are the only two choices or until you find more choices.

You can widen the decision before you narrow it to an answer.

When you get the blinders on, the focus is narrow and the options appear narrow.

Take a mental step back.

Broaden the picture.

Then narrow it back down.

Broaden it from two choices to three, four, or five if you can.

Then pick the best choice.

Then narrow it back down, focus on that choice, and make it successful.

This is Your Life Systems.

Thanks for being with me.

Please like and subscribe.

I'll see you on the next episode.

What's Next?

·        Identify one important decision that currently feels like either A or B.

·        Write down the two options you think you have.

·        Ask what a third, fourth, or fifth option could look like.

·        Look at how people with better results are approaching the same problem.

·        Separate the real constraint from the way you've framed the constraint.

·        Choose the strongest option only after you've widened the decision.

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