Stressed? Take care not to make rash decisions, like punching someone out of anger. Many bad decision are made when one is pushed into negative emotions.
I recently came across a startling statistic: We make an average of 217 food-related decisions a day.
Is it any surprise that we make so many poor choices about what to eat?
The researcher Roy Baumeister has found that the simple act of making decisions progressively depletes our ability to make them well.
We begin to experience decision fatigue. Worse yet, we are often not even consciously aware that we are tired and impaired.
Here’s how the brain compensates: As much as 95 per cent of the time, it makes decisions automatically, by habit or in reaction to external demands.
So what would it take to intentionally make better decisions in a world of infinite choices?
The answer begins with self-awareness. Our first challenge is to resist being reactive.
Many of our worst decisions occur after we’ve been triggered – meaning that something or someone pushes us into negative emotions and we react instinctively, fuelled by our stress hormones, in a state of fight or flight.
That’s all well and good if there’s a lion charging at you. It’s not very useful in everyday life.
Most of the time, it makes more sense to live by the Golden Rule of Triggers: Whatever you feel compelled to do – don’t.
If you respond out of compulsion, you haven’t made an intentional choice.
It may feel right – even righteous – in the moment, but it’s more likely to exacerbate the problem than solve it.
Here are three keys to making really good decisions:
The first key is to not make bad ones.
That begins with self-awareness – becoming more attentive to the signs that you are feeling threatened.
The most common ones are tightness in any part of your body, increased rapid breathing, and emotions such as anger and fear.
Just because you feel an emotion intensely does not mean you should act on it.
Instead, when you recognise these signs, take a couple of deep breaths – inhale to a count of three, exhale to a count of six.
Then focus on your feet, which will ground you back in reality.
All you are trying to do here is buy time. It is only once you have quieted your physiology that you can think clearly and reflectively about how best to respond.
Cortex to rationalise our short-sighted choices rather than to foresee their future consequences.
“It’s OK to have this dessert because I worked out this morning,” you tell yourself, even though it was your first workout in a month and your 10th dessert in that same span.
Or you convince yourself to put off a difficult assignment and deal with some emails you consider more urgent – only to find you’re too tired to tackle the tougher work later.
The solution is to ask yourself a simple question each time you’re contemplating a difficult decision: Which choice is going to add the greatest value and serve me best over time?
Plainly, there are instances when you simply have to do what is most urgent.
But it’s also easy to tell yourself that you always have urgent demands, and never leave any time to prioritise the things that might be harder to do but would truly add value.
One solution is to schedule your most important work for earlier in the day, when you typically have the most energy and the fewest accumulated demands.
Do the right thing – no matter how you feel.
Doing so requires knowing what you truly stand for.
Then what you need most is conviction, because choosing the right thing may involve sacrifice and discomfort.
It’s the difference between doing what makes you feel good – a couple of beers can get you there – and doing what makes you feel good about yourself.
If you deeply value honesty, do you warn a client away from a product you have doubts about, even if it means losing a sale?
If you are committed to kindness and consideration, do you help out friends in need even when you’re feeling exhausted or overburdened?
Cultivating perspective.
Once again, you can begin by asking yourself a simple question or two: What would I do here at my best?
Who do I really want to be? Intentionally embodying your values in your everyday behaviour requires the courage to override your more primitive impulses.
Think for a moment about someone who recently triggered deep negative emotions in you.
How did you react? Did your behaviour get you what you really wanted? Was it consistent with the person you want to be?
We always have a choice about how to behave. The challenge in life is to keep upping our game.
The primitive parts of our brains aren’t wired to consider the future, and they tend to seek out the most immediate source of gratification, the route with the least pain and discomfort.
Too often, we use our pre-frontal lobe of the brain.
Schwartz is the president and CEO of The Energy Project and the author of “Be Excellent at Anything.’’
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