The decision making brain

Decision

Whether you are looking for your own authentic direction or helping your client make decisions, one of the fundamentals of NLP is to provide choice in decision making. Each person has a strategy for making decisions, and we run our strategy the same way over multiple situations whether it’s purchasing a car or buying a house. You decided your strategy long ago and in the sidebar of your mental map there is a chattering internal discussion about all the options, jumping from thought to thought like a monkey in a tree. (More on decision strategies next week.)

Let’s pretend we have a choice to make, perhaps a large decision like changing companies. Which way do we go? We obsess ad infinitum over the attributes of the choice, the dangers, the timing, and what other people will say. Recent studies have shown that the process of making decisions can exhaust the brain. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=tough-choices-how-making. The longer the decision making process goes on, the harder our brain has to work and the harder the brain works,the more frustrated we become. If you’ve ever been sleepless at night over a decision, you know the feeling of relief when a decision has finally been made. Ah, the brain says, at least now I can rest.

NLP offers us many tools for finding the internal strategies and resources we all need to make decisions involving all the parts of our brain. The most important resource is typically right inside us…we are the answer to our own problem.

Can you imaging the value you bring to a client by providing a way to zero in on their strategy and help them make a decision before they reach the point of exhaustion and frustration?

Last week we looked at the power of the little bridge we call “or”. Another NLP language pattern called double binds uses the word “or” and helps guide decisions. This is not about guiding the decision where YOU want them to go, it’s about listening to the client and putting it in a bind format so they can go where THEY want go.

It might sound something like this: “I’m not going to give my house away and I’m willing to wait until I get my price. If I have to make double payments for a while, I will.”

Since there is a lot of fear going on with the client, you might want to give them some relief. “ Would you rather sell the house now and get moved or give it away six months from now? Because it’s factual that the longer a house sits on the market, the less it will sell for. What do you really want?”

The client’s brain will sit up and say, “Oh, the fear could become greater if we wait.” As the agent, you need not worry, this is not manipulation. You are merely getting to the point and helping the client make their own decision before their brain becomes too tired to function. (By the way, when people say they want to sleep on it, that’s a strategy to get some space for their brain to rest…not necessarily a bad thing, it’s part of a strategy). People want to make the best decisions for themselves on a deep level…you are giving them a gift if you can help them find the answer within themselves.

You can learn more about double binds and the language patterns of cause and effect in NLP2 class. Watch my site for upcoming dates.