Hi Everyone,

Great decision making is a powerful tool for transformation. Although we don’t often realize it, there isn’t a moment that goes by when we aren’t living in a decision we’ve made. 

I often get asked, “What’s the most important thing to know about decision making?”

To become great at decision making, you need to know that it is an emotional process, not a logical one. Scientists have shown that if the emotional center in your brain were removed, you would cease to make decisions. It would take you hours to decide what color pen to use or where to eat. Your IQ would remain the same, but your ability to make decisions, and your entire life, would fall apart. 

Let’s try an experiment; try to really feel this. 

Imagine you’re trying to decide whether or not to take a new job. You’ve created a list of pros and cons and you’re going over it and over it when some authority you completely trust shows up. They say, “Hey, I can guarantee you that if you take the job, you will feel happy, successful, and valid. If you don’t take the job, you won’t feel any of those things – in fact, you’ll feel the opposite.” 

Do you take the job or not? 

I use this example to show that what logical thinking is actually trying to do is engineer conditions for our desired emotional state based on what we want to feel and what we want to avoid feeling. This insight tells us two things; how we actually make decisions and how decision making gets convoluted.

What we call logical thinking is emotional decision making.

Clear decision making comes from learning to welcome all emotions. As you learn to look forward to welcoming feeling anything from successful to scared, all of a sudden, your decisions become clear. You stop making decisions as a strategy to avoid or get things in the short term. You are making decisions based on who you are and what you really want. 

Big love,

Joe