Avoid this it if you want to get the best outcomes

Avoid this it if you want to get the best outcomes

It’s easy to get caught up in the crowd and thoughtlessly accept other people’s ideas about the world. That applies as much to business leaders falling in line with a company’s traditions as it does to new parents acting on the old wives’ tales their parents told them.

Thinking for yourself can be a risky business. Stray too far from the herd, and you’re unlikely to make many friends. If everybody accepts something as true, then it must be, right?

Well, no. Think of the belief that the earth was the center of the universe. Pretty much everyone thought you’d have to be mad to question that idea. Then along came the astronomer Copernicus in the sixteenth century and mathematically proved that our solar system revolves around the sun.

Conventional wisdom is often downright deadly too. Before Joseph Lister pioneered antiseptic procedures in the nineteenth century, surgeons were convinced that there wasn’t any point in washing medical instruments.

Humans often seek safety in numbers, but history shows that’s not the best way of determining what’s true.

But how do you break your habit of relying on others’ assumptions? A good place to start is cultivating the habit of thinking things through for yourself before following others.
Once you start considering what’s best rather than what’s popular, you’ll already be well on the way to success.

Take the weeks immediately following the 9/11 terror attacks: there was a widespread perception that it wasn’t safe to fly or visit New York.

The author saw things differently. Flights to the city were dirt cheap, security was at an all-time high and the price of hotels and theatre tickets had plummeted because of low demand. It was actually a fantastic time to take a city break!

So a month after the tragedy he boarded a plane with his family and flew to New York. They enjoyed a wonderful experience that they’d never have been able to afford otherwise – all because they’d avoided the trap of popular thinking.