Strategic Insights: Leveraging Human Connections in Decision-Making

(With reference to the 'People Work with People' poll)

Imagine this: Person A's established garment showroom was devastated by a fire. Their maternal uncles and cousins united, providing funds for a new showroom, a rent-free small shop for three months, inventory on 90-day credit, customer referrals, and a barter-based advance order. They supported Person A without questioning insurance details or the cause of the fire.

That's either family or community.

Let's dive directly into this, thanks to all finance influencers for making terms like emergency funds, fixed deposits, recurring deposits, investing, ROI, and others widely recognized and understandable for most people.

Family: Emergency Funds

In family businesses like the one above, relying on family support is common and swift due to strong trust. However, setting boundaries and handling criticism can be tough due to emotional biases and cultural influences, crucial for personal growth. Conflicted situations may lead to dual setbacks, risking both family and professional relationships. This is how I coined the term "emergency funds." One can refine skills to manage these funds during stable times or opt to maintain a clear divide between personal and professional life until an emergency arises.

Friends: From Recurring to Fixed Deposits

While many individuals effectively balance and cultivate meaningful relationships, some struggle to form friendships without financial considerations. Major factors such as a deadline-driven world, competitive mindsets, introverted personalities, insecurities, social anxiety, and other challenges can make this difficult.

As the saying goes, friends over seven years become family or "family friends." Building lasting bonds akin to fixed deposits, offering reliability and trust, can lead to great achievements when not driven by financial motives. Collaborating with friends can be a joyful journey, but neglecting boundaries can also lead to conflicts.

Pleasant Exes: Recurring Monthly Deposits

We build these relationships for both immediate and future mutual monetary benefits, gradually establishing trust. Dealing with them is like making regular monthly deposits. After a specific period, we discover whether we can rely on them or not. Eventually, refer to them as a set standard while exploring both the "New & Known."

Oh yes, I intentionally omitted the 'reporting manager.' Choose the boss, not just the company, and the boss has THE boss within the company, so it's more like a chain system, following a top-to-bottom approach.

Unpleasant Exes: Bad Debt

Experiencing loss in time, money, respect, or trust makes us more vigilant, avoiding the same pitfalls and refraining from engaging with those who have led to losses. These experiences serve as valuable lessons while exploring new territories. Developing an instinct, often referred to as intuition, scientifically called “The trained hindbrain,” alerts you when "something is off," despite flattering words and glorified narratives.

Key Takeaways:

• The hindbrain is a vital brain component coordinating critical survival functions like respiration, sleep, wakefulness, hunger regulation, and danger response. Repetition of the same activity makes the hindbrain familiar with outcomes, signalling "something doesn’t add up here" when not fully aware.

• Mastering the ability to detach from biases and perceive things as they are enhances decision-making skills beyond the hindbrain's instinctive responses. Incorporating numbers and historical data strengthens decision accuracy and reliability.

• We've heard the term "born leader." Nurturing plays a significant role in developing these traits, not just innate qualities. Leaders accumulate more experiences through daily decisions, enhancing risk-taking and exploration of new territories, resulting in fewer negative outcomes.

• With a world population of 8 billion, there are always opportunities to explore new options. Even removing 100 unpleasant individuals, approximately 0.00000125% of the total population, is negligible. Math enthusiasts can delve deeper by considering factors like age, gender, education, income, profession, and geographic preferences for precise numbers. Please share your findings with me.

Making quicker decisions can preserve the most limited resource, "TIME," especially when managing the most complex resource: the human mind. Cultivating these skills for rational decision-making is crucial and powerful key for an individual, particularly in high-stakes situations. Improving sorting abilities enhances the judgement, while learning from past mistakes transforms anxiety from bad choices into valuable lessons. These instincts offer significant insight, perhaps not today, but someday soon !

Are you up for the challenge ?

Could you spare just 30 minutes this weekend to discover yourself ?

(I'm sure you will discover some interesting facts, just as I did.)

•        Do you know how many people one can meet in a lifetime ?

•        What's your count (per day/month/year) ?

•        Do you know that your choices and environment can affect this number ?

•        Can you list your friends, family, and both pleasant, unpleasant Exes to

to determine the percentages I mentioned earlier ?

•        Have you developed the skill to sort people according to your personality type ?

•        Do you know who you are and what doesn’t work for you ?