Save Time Making Decisions
By Tana M. Mann Easton, Lead Efficiency Engineer
Have you ever had a hard time making a decision? The decision could be as simple as choosing between pasta or sushi for takeout one night or as impactful as deciding between staying in your current job or choosing another path. When making decisions in my own life, when I can’t figure out the answer using my brain, I then turn to my deeper decision-making systems. Often, if my brain can’t figure something out right away, my heart/gut knows the answer.
One of my favorite scenes that shows this deeper knowing in action is in the TV show Friends: Watch the Scene Here. In the scene, Rachel thinks she is pregnant and takes a pregnancy test. Phoebe looks at the pregnancy test when it’s ready and tells Rachel that she’s not pregnant. Before that moment, Rachel was confused. She wasn’t trying to get pregnant, and she didn’t know if she did or didn’t want a baby. But after Phoebe emphatically told her that she wasn’t pregnant, she instantly felt sad. Her deeper knowing kicked in, and she knew that she did actually want a baby. Thankfully Phoebe told her that she lied and that the test actually revealed a pregnancy, and Rachel was overjoyed.
In my own life, if I can’t rationally figure out how to move forward with a decision, I will flip a coin. I’ll assign each decision to a side of a coin, and then I’ll flip it. I’ll notice the result of the coin toss, pretend that’s the decision that I’ll move forward with, and observe my gut reaction to it. If my body feels open, expansive, warm, or eager, then I know that I really do want to move forward with the decision of the coin. If my body feels closed, stressed, cold, or disappointed, then I know that I actually want to choose the opposite of the coin toss.
Since I was in high school, if people in my life are trying to decide between a couple of options, I’ll listen to the options and then I’ll emphatically tell them they should definitely move forward with one of the options. It doesn’t matter which option I choose honestly. A couple seconds after I make the emphatic suggestion, I ask them, “How did that choice make you feel?” Many times, this process actually gives them some insight into their deepest wishes regarding the choices.
There are so many times in my life when I need to make a decision and relying on my brain alone keeps me in a foggy loop where I can’t actually make any headway. But when I use the methods above to drop into my body and use my heart and gut to also decide, the deeper knowing emerges. So the next time you can’t rationally decide between a couple of choices, flip a coin and bring your full self to the decision making table.
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Decisively Yours,
Focus to Evolve Team