Why it is essential to have an external perspective in your decision-making process, and how to get a useful one?
A critical aspect of quality decision-making is learning from experience. Our learnings are our internal views of the world and reality. But our learnings lead to unintentional biases and provide incorrect inputs to our decision-making process. An external perspective helps bring objectivity to our internal view and prevents the decision-making process from being misled by inaccurate inputs.
Combining the inside and outside view gives you a clearer view of yourself, your beliefs, how far you are from reality, and helps in having correct inputs to your decision-making process.
How our past experience impacts our decision making?
You are in a hurry to reach the office for an important meeting. You chose a different route that was supposed to take less time. You arrive late to the office rather than arriving early and miss the appointment.
There could be many reasons for the delay on that particular day, a traffic jam, maybe the time of the day where everyone takes the same route, a vehicle break down, or road repair works. Not all of it is in your control.
Even though you know it is the fastest way, you won’t use it the next time you’re in a hurry to get to the workplace. Your experience and belief force you not to take the fastest possible route.
This may be a trivial example, but we all develop many deep routed beliefs internal to us over some time as a result of our life experiences that are difficult to let go of. These kinds of deep routed beliefs create hurdles and impair our decision-making process.
Accepting that there is another, perhaps fresh perspective accessible that is different from ours is the most challenging element of letting go of our internal beliefs.
Why is it vital to get an external perspective?
By listening (if not accepting) to an external perspective or different point of view of the same situation with the same information, you will have the chance to look at the situation objectively, helps you get closer to the reality that lies somewhere between these two different perspectives. The more you listen to external views and learn to calibrate your internal view, the closer you’ll get to reality and be able to make objective conclusions.
It’s crucial to realize that an external perspective isn’t always the best point of view or the best one to adopt or follow. The purpose of having an external perspective is to determine how far away from reality you are and the adjustments you have to make.
How can we learn to listen to external perspectives?
There are two crucial parts to listening to other peoples opinions
a) Recognize the type of person you are
When we have strong beliefs, listening to different points of view is hard, and accepting them is even more difficult and at times unsettling.
It’s impossible for people who are self-centered, confident, have a big ego, and believe they have a superior view of the world than others to listen to outside opinions. The external perspective has a good probability of shattering deeply held beliefs, which would be tremendously upsetting to them.
When you are vulnerable to being easily influenced by others listening to their point of view may be harmful sometimes.
It’s easy for people who are not confident and believe that others have a better view of the world than theirs to get influenced by outside opinions. The external perspective has a good probability of being harmful to them and they continue to make bad decisions.
We should be careful from who we are seeking the external perspective, based on who we are and what is our identity.
b) Identify the best person to ask for feedback
Find someone who has been in a circumstance similar to yours. As what she did do, what factors she considered and how did she arrive at a conclusion, what was the outcome, what she thinks of the decision she made.
Seek out a person who can provide a fresh perspective. Talk to your relative, friend, colleague, or mentor who you always go back and share your beliefs and thoughts and just listen to them.
In both cases find people who are invested in you but not in your problem.
What does that mean invested in you but not in our problem?
Example 1: You want to quit your high-paying job to be an entrepreneur? Who do you go for advice? Not your parents and not your partner, though they want the best for you, they are also impacted by your decision. Your decision brings the uncertainty of not having stable monthly incoming that they are used to. So they are not only invested in you but also invested in your problem.
Example 2: Your job change requires moving to a different city or country, again your partner, children, parents may not be the right people to give you external perspective as they are impacted, your partner might have to quit the job, your kids miss their school friends, your parents miss you. So they are not only invested in you but also invested in your problem.
Who can be a good mentor then?
One good way of finding that person or a mentor — when you call him/her, he/she won’t say “hey how come you remembered me after a long time”, rather “he would say how are you?” no matter how long it has been. He is the one who is invested in you and happy to see you grow and is not invested in your problem. Avoid people who want your failure, who wants you to fail, it’s very important not to get intentionally given wrong advice.
A good mentor, asks you questions, will not make judgments on your choices, will not influence your thinking towards the solution, he/she is least bothered about the final solution but genuinely wants you to be successful and who helps you see the things in a way that you never thought and leads you to make better decisions rather than influencing.
Marrying the outside and inside view gives you a clearer view of yourself, how you ended up where you are, and what the future might hold for you.
Summary
- Our decision-making process is sometimes impacted by our past experiences.
- An outside viewpoint allows us to see the same scenario in a new light.
- An external point of view aids in the calibration of our interior perspective.
- Alignment of our internal and external perspectives gets us closer to the truth.
- Recognize who you are and whether you believe yourself or others.
- Seek feedback from the appropriate people.
- Find mentors that are interested in you but not in your problem.
For more reading refer to How to Decide by Annie Duke
