We have a lot of decisions to make every day. At what time will I get up? What will I wear today? What will I have for breakfast? And I could spend the next few minutes rattling off examples, but you get the picture.
If you’re going to be making all these decisions, you’re going to want to make the best decisions possible. Decide to get up too early, and you needlessly miss out on some sleep. Decide to get up later, and you run the risk of not catching back up the rest of the day. Wear something more formal, and you could feel over dressed all day. Not formal enough, and you could feel awkwardly under dressed. Eat the wrong first meal, and you may not have enough energy for your day. Eat too much and you could gain weight. So how do you make the best decision possible?
Think back to some of the decisions you’ve made recently. When you made some of them, did you get a feeling of unease or dread? Or did you feel calm and peaceful about the decision? That’s your internal feedback system trying to help you out.
You see your mind, where you make these decisions, is easily swayed by whatever logic you want to attach to your decision. It’s the ultimate Yes man. It knows when you are “deciding” whether or not to have that third donut that you’ve already decided to have it. So it starts presenting you with the logic of why it’s ok, maybe even good, that you eat the donut.
But there’s another part of you that knows the honest answers. You can call it your intuition, your sixth sense, the voice in the back of your head. Whatever, you call it you’re talking about the internal feedback system. It’s not really interested in what you want. It’s looking out for what’s best for you. Because somewhere in your head there’s a part of you that wants to succeed and knows how to do it. You just need to start listening to it.
How do you start listening to it? The same way you focus in on any sound that’s hard to hear. First you get things as quiet as you can, in this case by calming your mind. Perhaps by meditation, or even just as simple as stopping and taking a breath. Then you focus on the voice. The more you pay attention to it the louder it becomes. It’s like when you hear a noise in your room. At first you just know it’s a sound in the room. But when you focus on it you get a clearer picture of where it’s coming from until you hone in on it and discover the source. The last part is to make use of what the voice is telling you.
Think about this. If you had a friend who always wanted your advice, but never did anything you advised, how motivated are you to help? You’ll probably stop trying. Your internal feedback system is the same way. If you constantly ignore it, the system just doesn’t try as hard to help you out. But when it knows that you take its counsel seriously, you’ll hear it loud and clear all the time.
If you always listen and do as it tells you is your life guaranteed to be perfect? Of course not. Your inner voice isn’t perfect, it’s just motivated to do what’s best for you. But the more you use it the better it’s decisions get. And the better you get.
So in the week to come, every time you make a decision stop for a moment and think, “How does this make me feel?” If it makes you feel good, trudge right on forward. If it makes you feel a little queasy, maybe keep thinking a little longer for a better decision. You’ll know when you hit it because it’ll feel right. Happy decision making. And have a great day.
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