Get rid of Dilemmas — the Rubber Band model
Have you ever moved from one city to another city? It could be for college, or it could be for work. Have you ever changed your career? By this, I do not mean changing from say an Android developer to a Flutter developer. I mean, something like changing from being a developer to a designer.
Have you ever thought about getting an early retirement and how it would be like to smoke cigars on a private island?
That is quite a stretch, but yes, if you’ve ever thought of any of these issues, or something like this, you would have been deep in thought, contemplating whether to go forward with the decision, or whether to stick to the existing situation.
Through this piece you’ll be understanding a very effective means to get rid of dilemmas.
You see, all these contemplations and thoughts that arise out of the prospect of taking a big decision, are the outcomes of a dilemma. And it’s not like they only come around once in a blue moon — no, dilemmas come in all shapes and sizes, and can stump you out for an entire day, that could have been spent on implementing your decisions productively, rather than thinking about what would be right, and good, for you.
Well have no fear — this is where the Rubber Band model would be of utmost help.
It is a highly effective way to gauge where you stand with respect to any decision you could possibly take, and then open up all prospects in front of your own eyes, to take the best action.
So how does it work?
This Rubber Band model is based on the working principle of, you guessed it, a rubber band. You see, when you hold a rubber band by two finger tips, one from each hand, and you pull — there are two opposing forces acting in that situation.
Similarly, for each dilemma that you’re in, you have two opposite forces — “what is holding me?” and “what is pulling me?” When you have the answers to these two questions, you will be able to see, which force is higher. And once you do that, you get to know what your correct approach to the dilemma would be.
Now, there are two questions you might have.
One, what if the “what’s holding me” and the “what’s pushing me” forces have exact equal weightage?
Well, to put you at ease, in almost all cases, they are never equally balanced. There will always be something or the other that will sway you in either direction.
The second question is a more sincere one — you might be thinking — “when you say to think of the questions ‘what is holding me’ and ‘what is pulling me’, aren’t you simply telling me to answer ‘what are the pros’ and ‘what are the cons’?”
From a very superficial overview, you might be right — they are probably pointing towards the same thing. But, there is a very critical difference. When you say pros and cons of a decision — it automatically translates into the positives and negatives. This is not the correct mindset to have. Instead when you think of “what’s holding me” and “what’s pulling me”, you have both as positive questions — this way, you have two attractive alternatives, and not one good and one bad.
It’s all about a proper model and the correct mindset to use it with — and you could very well get rid of all your dilemmas.
There you have it — the Rubber Band model.
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