Decisive Man

• David Tian Ph.D. discusses the four issues in being decisive.
• David Tian Ph.D. shares how you can train yourself to be more assertive.
• In this Man Up episode, David Tian Ph.D. enumerate the skills you need to get better at if you want to be more decisive.

David Tian: Boom, stop! I’m David Tian, and in this video, I answer the question: Is being decisive attractive? Welcome to the Man Up show.

Masculinity for the Intelligent Man. I’m David Tian, Ph.D. and this is Man Up!

Hi, I’m David Tian, Ph.D., and for over the past 12 years, I’ve been helping hundreds of thousands of people in over 87 countries attain success, happiness, and fulfilment in life and love, and welcome to the Man Up show. We are in Florence right now and this is the St. Maria Cathedral. Gorgeous cathedral. We are in between where Michelangelo’s David is, and the Uffizi Gallery where we’re going next, and just getting some lunch. So, nice backdrop here to answer a question. Actually, this was a post in the Man Up Facebook group, and it wasn’t a question per se but it’s a question that I hear a lot. So, I’m going to use this from Jeremy. So, thank you, Jeremy. So, I’m going to read a couple of paragraphs here real quick.

“I was chatting with a friend over the weekend about life and I noticed something: He was very good at thinking for himself. It reminds me of how early in my 20s when no woman wanted me, it felt. I used to be so indecisive, and this obviously turned off a lot of women.” And that’s the point I want to make, is that a lot of guys are super indecisive, especially if they’re overly analytical. So, that’s point one. And then he blends it with a couple other points, and I just want to clarify for Jeremy that these are separate points. And for anyone else who thinks that they’re one thing, they are related, but they’re different. It’s important to realize that they’re different.

Okay, so the next part he goes into is, “I was too in my head, and then when I tried to do practice attracting women, I would rarely ever follow through on whatever I had consumed because all of the advice seemed to contradict each other. Having self-leadership in the sense of being able to think for yourself and make your own decision is one of the hallmarks of a grounded masculine man. After all, women want a man who has certainty in who he is and where he’s going.” We got a question in the comments.

“What was the turning point?” He said, “If I remember correctly, it came with shutting my nice guy tendencies. I got sick of being walked over and feeling like a victim to life and people that I started asserting myself. This showed up in personal relationships as well as with deciding how to think for myself instead of always relying on others to make decisions. Because there are four issues intertwined in there, it’s important to just see that they’re different because you can address these four separately. And if you do that, it’s going to be addressed more thoroughly. So, if you go backwards to this post, he talks about showing up in relationships, relying on… And thinking for himself instead of relying on others to make decisions. So, this is decisiveness but more importantly it’s like critical thinking skills, so that’s number one.

Being a victim and not asserting himself, so that’s the second thing, asserting yourself. This is actually… People who have difficulty asserting themselves beyond just the basic, they read a how-to tips guide on how to assert yourself and they still have trouble doing it, like it’s an emotional barrier, then it’s a shame-based issue. And luckily, there’s an entire three-hour module in Rock Solid Relationships on how to address assertiveness and shame and getting to the root of the matter. So, that’s in Rock Solid. That’s a huge issue, assertiveness, and there’s a really great book that I would recommend guys read or people read who want to get better at asserting themselves, and this is When I Say No, I Feel Guilty. It’s a bizarre title. It’s like a sales copy type of title, but it’s a really great book and it’s really deep psychologically.

Okay, so that’s assertiveness. Then he gets into shutting my nice guy tendencies, which is related to the shame, definitely, but he gets into leadership. So, that’s the third issue, leadership. So, leadership is obviously a good quality to have if you want to succeed in the world, you want to be attractive, so leadership. It’s a separate issue. It involves assertiveness. It’s hard to be a leader if you’re not assertive, but it’s more than that, it’s taking the responsibility to go first, to bring others with you, to think about others and their needs as well. So, that’s all a big part of being a leader.

And then finally, the main point that I wanted to make was that… He wrote about being indecisive, being indecisive and this turning off a lot of women. So, being indecisive is something you can fix right away. If you’re very analytical, and I hope you are, I hope you’re a critical thinker, then you do your analysis, you come up with your conclusion, then you act on it. There’s a lot of research in psychology that shows that after a certain point, after having — you get too much information, then you don’t actually make a better decision or you only make a marginally better decision. There’s an 80-20 rule that also applies to information and decisions, so you got to reach that point where you’ve got enough information. Getting more information and all the time that that takes and all of the opportunity cost is not worth the decision that you end up making at the end. So, get to the point where you’ve got just enough information and make that decision.

You can train yourself to do this. For example, if you’re at a restaurant like this, you’re looking at the menu, it’s a big-ass menu, and you could think very in-depth about every single menu choice or you can start training yourself to make quicker decisions because this is a good trait for a leader. It also helps you be decisive. It trains you literally to be decisive by making decisions quicker and sticking with them, and then seeing what comes what the world gives you as a result of those decisions. So, you look at the menu, just a little quick tip, just practice this, you can do this in many different areas of life. Look at the menu. There are lots of different choices. The first one that pops out at you that is not bad for you, that just like — okay, that’s good enough, go with good enough and just say, “Okay, that’s the one I’m getting.” Close up the menu, move on with your life, do other stuff, get into the discussion, whatever it is, right? Be present, whatever it is. Great, because you’ve just won back that opportunity to make the most of your time instead of sitting there forever, ruminating over the menu.

So, I can tell a guy who has approach anxiety a lot, because he looks at the menu and takes forever to order. There’s a nice correlation, but I see some causation there. So, decisiveness is something you can train. Assertiveness is something you can train. Leadership is something you can get better at. So, these are all skills that you can get better at. Again, assertiveness, I have a whole three-hour module on that in Rock Solid Relationships. I recommend you get that and move into that. So, this is posted in the Man Up private Facebook group. Click the link, join the group. I’ll see you inside the group. My food is going to be coming out real soon, so I got to get to that, and there are all kinds of weird distractions going on here. So, I will talk to you inside the Man Up Facebook group. See you then.

David Tian, signing out from Florence. Until then, Man Up!