Dr. Arthur Brooks describes three gut feelings that arise when facing major decisions: excitement, fear, and deadness. The ideal emotional mix is 80% excitement and 20% fear. Any deadness signals the option isn't right for you.
When anybody's facing an opportunity, a new opportunity, a new threshold, whether it's a marriage proposal or moving to a new city or having a new career or whatever it happens to be, there's three sensations that you're going to feel based on the data inside the right hemisphere of your brain. Sort of the episodic memory beyond words. That's your gut. When you feel like you have a gut feeling. Those three feelings when you're facing an opportunity are excitement, fear and deadness, which is that sense of emptiness where you're looking at opportunity. It makes you feel dead inside, like, I really should get married to that woman, but it makes me feel dead inside to imagine myself 80 years old with her. Right. That kind of thing. The right mix that you should actually, when you know it's the right step to take, is 80% excitement, 20% fear and 0% deadness. That's the right combination where you're most. By the way, it's not 0% fear because you might feel fail. But that's the point. If there is 0% totally, and if there's no risk associated with it, it's going to be boring. Generally speaking, if you're going to change jobs or go back to school or marry that girl or move to Topeka, it should be 80% excitement, 20% fear and 0% deadness.
