Selective Reasoning...And How It Can Kill You

Sometimes I read some of the threads here, look at the views of some people,
digest what they're saying and come to a very startling realization.

Selective reasoning can kill you.

I don't want to go into specifics because I don't want to end up attacking
anybody in general, so I am going to create a fictional example and hope I
can get the message across.

John Doe wants to write a hit song. It's his main passion in life.

Jim Smith says to John Doe, "If you want to write a hit song, you need to
make sure you concentrate on your craft...get all the X's and O's down as
far as song construction and perfect it. Once you've done that, you'll
have a hit song."

On the surface, this seems like solid reasoning. After all, if you don't know
how to write, how can you write a hit song.

Now, Bob Jones says to John Doe, "Screw the craft. You have to listen to
the radio and see what's hot...see what people are listening to and copy
it. That's all anybody does anyway. If you can copy a popular sound, you'll
have a hit song."

On the surface, again, this also seems like solid reasoning. After all, if you
can copy what's out there, you should be able to achieve success.

But can you copy it without the skills...or do you need both?

Now, Ed White comes along and says, "Screw the craft and the copying.
You need to have contacts in the business. There are plenty of people
out there who are talented, know their craft, and are writing the same
crap as everybody else but are getting nowhere. The reason is because
they don't have contacts."

On the surface, once again, this also makes a lot of sense, especially if
it's coming from somebody who is in the business and knows these things.

What I failed to mention is that Jim, Bob and Ed are all in the business and
are experts at it.

However, they are all using selective reasoning to give their view of what
the most important thing is...forgetting about all the other factors.

They are letting their personal prejudice get in the way of clear, pure,
logical thought, which clearly dictates that all of these things are
important.

Are they all equally important?

Well, one could argue about that for all eternity with nobody ever really
presenting an argument that is going to be totally convincing to everybody.

That is why selective reasoning can kill you. By choosing to listen to just
one side of an argument, you are setting yourself up for possible failure
simply because you are ignoring all possibilities.

And we haven't even touched on the fact that there could be even more
factors involved in writing a hit song, such as the talent that you yourself
have to begin with. Who is to say that talent isn't the most important
thing? Is there evidence to show that this isn't always true? Just look at
some of the musical acts that have made it to answer that question.

But ultimately, having as many pieces of the puzzle is going to give you
the best chance of success.

So please do yourself a favor.

When you ask for advice on Adwords, or article marketing or SEO, or
even picking out an AR service, weigh all the factors. Listen to all the
arguments. Use a little common sense and from that decide what you're
going to do. Don't take any one person's word as gospel, no matter how
successful they are because you see, they may very well be using
selective reasoning on you and not realizing that they are leaving out
things that have actually contributed to their success, either because
they didn't think they were important or simply forgot about them altogether.

When you take that jigsaw puzzle out of the box, remember one thing...

You can't finish it without all the pieces.