Encourage Your Brain: When Your Brain Can't Quite Decide

Have you ever been at a point where you need to make a decision, but you just don't feel like you have what you need to make that decision? And typically what happens when we're in a state like that, we want to get more information so that we can make a better decision. And I'm all for having good data so that you can back up a decision that you want to make, but there's also a tipping point where too much information can sort of work against us. And that's where it's valuable to understand a little bit about your brain and how it can support you in that process of making a decision. So in the book Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, they talk about that there's a part of the brain that really helps us to make the best choices. And the funny thing about that part of the brain that supports us in that is that it's in an area called the basal ganglia. And lo and behold, there are no connections between that part of our brain and the verbal centers of our brain. So what that means is that this place in our brain that can help us make good choices doesn't have words to put to it. And I bet if you think about it, there have been places in your life where you think, "I know I need to do this. I really can't even explain to you why I need to do this, but I know in my heart of hearts or in my gut that this is the right thing for me to do." I had a decision like that many years ago when I was offered a position. This was some 20 years ago, and at the time I'd been working really hard in my little solopreneur business, and all of my friends said, "Susan, you should take that job. You'd be crazy not to take that job. You'll make a lot more money. You'll work fewer hours." And something in my gut said, "Don't take that job," and I didn't. And unfortunately, it wasn't but about a couple of months later that the person who had actually offered me that job— he was a very well-respected respected attorney in the city that I lived in, he took his life and people were just flabbergasted. And there was a part of me that just thought, "I'm so grateful that I paid attention to what I knew was right for me at that moment." So back to if you've got some kind of a decision to make and you feel like you have a lot of data but you still can't make it, that's the time to really pay attention to not just the words in your head that says, "Go this direction or that direction," but in Instead, to pay attention to your gut, to pay attention to your emotions, and to be able to process those and let those also inform you, because that— when we have this full-body sort of decision about, about the ways and the directions that we want to go, that's when we're going to make the best decisions.