Feelings Guide Your Decision-Making

Neuroscience is helping to dispel long-held beliefs that intellect alone is responsible – and desirable, for effective decision-making.

Cultural conditioning still influences the belief that emotions are irrational impulses that impede clear fact-based thinking.

Understanding that electrical impulses traveling through emotional centers in the brain “evaluate” the emotional data necessary for correct decisions can help people to unlearn the inaccurate belief that “emotions have no place in decision-making.”

Consider for a moment that human experiences are experienced through our senses: visual, auditory, kinesthetic (feelings), olfactory (smell) and gustatory (taste). This process is unconscious and unique to each person.

For example, here is a sample illustration of how an unconscious “strategy” for decision-making might work:

• First step - you talk to yourself (auditory internal) about the context, issues, etc. surrounding the decision
• Second step - you have conversations with other people ,receive feedback regarding your thought processes (auditory external)
• Third step - you then seek out additional information, gather data through reading various information (visual external)
• Fourth step - you then “talk” to yourself and evaluate the information (auditory internal) you gathered
• Fifth step - you make a picture in your mind of the affect, consequences (internal visual) and possible outcome if you went ahead and made the decision
• Sixth step - then you get a strong positive feeling (kinesthetic internal) from the internal picture and you make the decision.

Notice that the last step in this hypothetical decision-making strategy, prior to making the decision is a feeling state…connected to an emotion/s. Feelings guide the process, even when we are unaware of it.

It is highly probable that people who have difficulty making decisions may take a long time getting to the feeling state. One possible reason for this might be they keep recycling to internal auditory (self-talk) ruminating about the conditions, facts, issues, consequences, etc. and never get to a positive emotional/feeling state. This can trigger old thoughts (this won’t work because) and feelings (worry, doubt, fear).

Conventional thinking about reason over emotion is generally based on two assumptions: the first is that we have a choice whether to feel or not, and second, that emotional “suppression” works.

According to Dr. Daniel Wegner, professor of psychology, Harvard University, there can be significant consequences when you try to push away thoughts and feelings. He called this the “rebound” effect. Simply put, these strategies often backfire and result in an increase of the intensity of the thoughts and emotions that are being suppressed.

Our prevailing misconceptions about how the brain works keep us mired in obsolete ideas about the decision-making process. Many of us try to rule out the emotional side of decision-making only to find we become stuck in so-called analysis-paralysis. We often avoid making decisions or make them hastily because we want to skip the feeling part, not only unavoidable, it’s short-sighted.

A lot of precious neural energy is wasted on the either or debate of emotion vs. reason in decision-making. In fact, it’s over-thinking that tends to overwhelm our rational pre-frontal cortex. When faced with too many variables, the brain simply makes the wrong decision because its resources are overburdened.

To optimize your decision-making process, you have to build capacity in both your brains – the rational and the emotional. They’re brilliantly interwoven to maximize understanding the world around you and the vast world within you. It means bringing more of your thought process into your conscious awareness.

5 Key Steps to a More Conscious Decision-Making Process:

1. Notice the content of your thoughts.
2. Notice what you feel when you think about the possibilities.
3. Pay attention to how much you draw on past decisions and outcomes? Are they skewed more towards successes or mistakes?
4. What kind of language do you use to talk to yourself? Is it kind or harsh? Does it vary? If so, when?
5. What’s your decision-making style? Do you over-analyze, generalize or prematurely cut-to-the-chase of a problem?

Understanding what you think and how you feel under different circumstances is critical to this process. Depending on the scope and importance of the decision this will vary. Make sure the information you consider takes into account your intuitive sense of the right direction to take.

Studies show that long before your reasoning mind kicks in, your emotional brain has been sensing the way to go. Your feeling brain is listening through your body, so the information that you receive is sometimes subtle and somatically based.

Every choice we make is based on a feeling. Becoming more conscious of how thought guides feelings and vice-versa will give you much more control and freedom in what you decide.

This article adapted from original at Mindful Matters

George Altman is an Executive Coach, Organizational Development Consultant and founding Partner at Intentional Communication Consultants. George is also a senior leader and course developer for the American Management Association. Connect with George Altman