Better Way To Decide - Head and Heart

Every minute of the day we make hundreds of choices; in fact various internet sources estimate we make about 35,000 remotely conscious decisions every day. We decide what we want to eat, where we want to go, who we want to go with, and ultimately how we want to go about our lives.  Most of our decision making seems relatively unconscious to us, and it's probably a good thing. Just imagine what would happen if our brains had to decide every breath we took, every muscle we moved, or even observe and react to every stimulus change in our environment; how overwhelmed we would be then. 

So to manage this we create automatic, habitual responses to deal with these choices for the most part unconsciously. We create predecided, default decisions about how we will react to specific events around us based on our preferred experiences of our past. This is our neural feedback loop in full swing. This works well for some of the simple repetitive decisions that we make. It works to keep us safe and allows us to maintain focus on the things that really need our focused attention.

The decisions in our lives seem to become harder though when we don't have a known outcome or previous experience to close the loop for. These are the choices we have to create new experiences and this is where we sometimes seem to come unstuck. It's in these moments when we can experience elements of anxiety about making the right choices, fear over the likelihood of successful outcomes, or sometimes even blame towards others, about the circumstances we find ourselves in, no longer having a choice to do something a certain way.

In these situations as we start to weigh up options, we identify risks and we start to potentially see less than perfect outcomes, and it's here we may start to feel overwhelmed about just having to make a decision at all.

What if we just made decision making really simple, and we just decided based on what felt like a better option? Could that really be possible? Is that really being responsible?

I argue in both cases, Yes. The whole reason for making a decision is to decide on a change we actually wish to make. The change we are making is to move us from our current state of being to experience a better one. We essentially want to, be, do or have something that makes us feel differently than we do now. So why don't we just do that first? What if we just decided based on what will make us feel better and go with that?

Deciding on the action because it makes us feel better in some way is really the only place to start because it's ultimately the place we want to end up anyway. Everything we do is because we think we will feel better having done it. We attempt to think our way to actions to decide what we should do to feel better; yet when it comes to our feelings what we actually seem to do is to choose to become anxious, confused and frustrated, in an attempt to get to a better feeling place in the end. Ironic really isn't it.

I know, I know, choosing to feel better is easier said than done, but not doing it seems kinda counter-intuitive doesn't it? I know you can't just switch off the head and go straight to the heart, so in my own struggle to do this I found a great tool that for me enabled both to thrive.

I found an amazing set of 4 questions that helps me decide on major decisions in my life. Once I answered these question with my thinking mind, I was able to choose the better feeling state it generated for me about the outcome. This process gave me the structure to weigh up options, including the outcomes, and impacts of both the actions and results and allowed my final decision to be based on the best feeling outcome for myself.

The 4 questions are called The Cartesian Square questions, and they are;

• What will happen if I do
• What will happen if I don't
• What won't happen if I do
• What won't happen if I don't

To complete the exercise for yourself, and experience the results, follow these simple steps.

1) - Start by identifying the choice you are thinking of making. 

Example - Should I join the gym?.

2) - Divide a single piece of paper into 4 sections and answer one question in each of the 4 quadrants.

Tips for considering the answers to the questions

• What has to change for it to take place or arrive?
• How will the choice change how you think, feel and behave?
• What else do you need to be, do and have to create the outcome?
• What are the outputs that change, the outcomes created, and the impact it will have on yourself and/or others?

3) - Once you have answered all 4 questions, ask yourself what FEELS like the best answer.

This simple exercise allows for a structured way to identify the better feeling state you want your decision to give you, helping you connect your thinking and feeling in a more meaningful way.

Most of our decisions are simple and can be made by choosing to move towards something that will make you feel better in some way, but if the options seem complicated, then there is always the cartesian square to help you get your thinking and feeling more connected and aligned.

"We are not thinking machines that feel we are feeling machines that think." -Antonio Damasio