Open To Opposites

This week's Grasshopper Notes essay details an exercise you can do to help you decide quicker. It's from John Morgan for the week of May 20th.

Grasshopper Notes are the writings from America's Best Known Hypnotherapist John Morgan. His podcasts contain his most responded to essays and blog posts from the past two decades. 

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Transcript

Open To Opposites

Being open to opposing viewpoints can give you a finer appreciation of another’s position that they’re stuck on, but how do you use opposites to decide a sticky wicket of your own?

Here’s a technique I learned many years ago that’s been quite helpful in making decisions.

Let’s say you’re of two minds about something – meaning you’re not sure which way to go. You can list all the pros and cons and have an endless debate or you can decide much quicker.

Here’s how: Completely convince yourself of each side of the argument. That means give all your thought and energy to making a convincing argument for one of the options, and then totally switch gears and make a solid case for the other.

After you’ve made each case crystal clear, go back and forth in your mind between them. Don’t debate which one is better, just completely entertain one position and then the other over and over again. Each time you go back and forth between them, do it a bit faster than the time before. The objective is to get your switch time down to a second or two.

When you’ve accomplished that, leave the decision making alone and go do something else, preferably something pleasurable. 

Give your attention to something else. It could be as simple as doing a crossword puzzle, reading a book, taking a walk, taking a shower or bath, or something else you like to do. Your decision making apparatus will be working in the background without you having to obsess about it. Your job at this point is to enjoy what you’re doing.

Think of it in old school terms as putting a letter of application in the mail. You have no control over it once it’s in the mailbox or dropped off at the post office. You’ve done the work. Now it’s time to wait for the result, not debate whether you should have sent the letter.

Most times you will get an answer. And don’t be too surprised how quickly it’ll come. And the best news is, there will be no debate in your mind as to whether it was the “right” decision. You’ll be totally convinced it’s the way for you to go.

You’ve taken the debate out of the deciding process by being open to opposites. It’s an elegant way to open doors much quicker than if you take the time to endlessly dicker.

All the best,

John