Call Him Double Down

Mike – “This is Trent. We call him Double Down.”

Trent. – “Stop right there!  Ladies, don’t you always double down on an 11?”

Lisa – “No matter what. Like splitting aces.”

It’s a smart play to double down on an 11 in Black Jack because your chances of hitting 21 are worth the extra gamble.  On the other hand, it’s foolish to double down on a losing hand.  In cards your chances are based on mathematical probability.  Playing the odds is the name of the game.  Avoid the slim odds!

In our lives, the game is not entirely mathematical.  Decisions are made for all kinds of reasons that have nothing to do with probability.  Emotion, prior programming and a host of other variables lead to the less than logical decisions that we humans make regularly.  For example I double down on mistakes.  It’s not something I do intentionally.  It happens less today than it did a few years ago but it happens.  Most of the improvement in this area is due to habits and pre-scripting.

Like doubling down on an 11, daily habits that have the greatest possibility of working are key.  Usually these habits are not hard to find.  You know what they are but in the moment people get overwhelmed by emotion and choose the easy/comfortable route.  The path to where you want to go is not hard to find, it’s just hard to follow.  The more times that you follow that path, the easier it becomes to stay on.

Actors can definitely ad-lib their lines but for the most part, they work from a script.  Pre-scripting particularly difficult actions in your mind can be an effective way to get past them with the best results.  Visualizing the event in advance puts you into a proactive state of mind rather than reactive.  It does not resolve the situation in advance but can reduce the amount that emotion carried to it.

So go out into the world and bet on yourself.  Double down on the things that lead you to the life that you want.  Don’t allow yourself to bet on lottery number odds with your life.  Getting what you want is not a matter of luck, it’s a matter of time if you set the game up right!

Pete (The guy behind the guy behind the guy!)