Small Decisions Determine Your Destiny

The following statement might seem contrary to logic, but it’s true: The first step in creating a Prosperity Mindset is understanding that success requires making the right decisions in the seemingly inconsequential moments of your life.

Bigger Is Better, No?

Most of us operate under the misconception that our life is a reflection of the big moments of our lives. But in reality, it’s the small and seemingly inconsequential decisions we make a million times over the course of our lives that determine our destiny.

When you have a big decision to make, you will usually think about the decision consciously, debate your options, and come up with what you think is the best decision. Because you put so much thought into the decision, it’s usually the right decision. But what happens when we make seemingly inconsequential decisions without consciously thinking about them?

How Did I Get Here?

Consider this: You leave your work to drive home. On the way, you are listening to music, drinking a cup of coffee, and navigating traffic, all the while never missing a turn or hitting another car. During the trip, you might even take a phone call from a customer or your kid and carry on a conversation—still never missing a turn or hitting another car.

Suddenly, without ever consciously thinking about the directions, you pull into the driveway of your house. Somehow, you navigated all the turns and twists in the road (the seemingly inconsequential events) automatically, without a conscious thought.

We’ve all had that experience, right? It’s incredible that we can navigate a 4,000-pound automobile along the freeway or surface streets and encounter thousands of other cars without even a conscious thought about where we’re going.

But ask yourself this simple question: Could you have driven to that same house without consciously thinking about it the very first time you went there? Of course not. You would have needed a map, GPS, or a smartphone to help you get there.

Nevertheless, once you make the trip from your work to your home several times, eventually, the directions to your house go from your conscious mind to your subconscious mind. When something becomes a subconscious activity, we call it second nature. And when something becomes second nature, we can do it without a deliberate, conscious thought.

Hey Siri…

We refer to the route between our work and our home as “directions,” and the individual twists and turns have no significance in and of themselves. They are, by definition, seemingly inconsequential events. In other words, if I were in a helicopter and saw your car turn from Main Street onto Elm Street on your way home, there would be no significance to what I saw—it’s just a car turning from one road onto another road. The individual components of the directions mean nothing to an observer.

Nevertheless, if you string those seemingly inconsequential lefts and rights together in the same order every time, how often do you reach your desired destination? Every single time. You can’t follow the exact directions that got you home yesterday and accidentally end up across town in the wrong location.

If you follow the directions the same way every time, you will reach your destination every time.

If you can relate to the experience of driving home without consciously thinking about where you’re going, you can apply the same principle to going from wherever you are in your sales career to wherever you want to be in your career.

Auto Pilot

The key is making the correct, seemingly inconsequential decisions every time. Because if you do, success is guaranteed. You can only fail to reach your destination if you fail to make the right seemingly inconsequential decisions every time.

For example, suppose you are currently making $60,000 per year—that’s your current “location”—and you would like to go to a new “destination” of $200,000 per year.

Are there certain things you would need to do to reach that new destination? Of course there are! Those things are called the directions, and those directions are the seemingly inconsequential decisions you make in every sales opportunity. When you make the correct, seemingly inconsequential decisions about how you run the sales call, you will end up at the desired location.

Take the day today to consider how you can make small decisions automatic and correct every time. Mindset, training, and repetition are key factors for me. What about you?