Something I'm thinking a lot about lately is decision-making.
I've worked with a number of clients around this theme, but it also isn't an area where I feel at all like I have "expertise" or a system. (It should be noted that I'm not actually a believer in true "expertise" generally, so I'm not being self-deprecating here!) More like I've landed on a new insight about how decisions get made, and it's a whole lot different than what I spent the first 40 years of my life believing.
Maybe this will ring true for you.
Okay, so, here's how I see it now:
The only hard part about decisions is thinking you have to make them.
What does that even mean, right? 😂
Well, we can all conjure up plenty of times when decisions were seemingly made without the pro/con lists or consulting a million friends and relations, right?
Times when something beyond us guided us. A feeling. An instinct. Some kind of drive or deep, inner knowing.
Or maybe certain decisions didn't even feel like decisions because the answer or next step seemed so obvious. As if it pre-existed thought.
What we call it might vary, but the concept is the same: Some decisions unfold with a kind of effortlessness. The way forward is self-evident. There's a certain degree of common sense operating within us, and that results in a seamless experience of something being decided.
In these instances, there isn't a whole lot of thinking and conscious noodling happening.
There's just...flow. Movement. Life continuing to develop.
We'll start with an inane example. Going to get yourself a drink of water when you feel thirsty. No real decision gets made. You simply get up and fill your water glass.
Occasionally, the mind jumps in and adds some narration via thought: Wait until this episode is over, if you're watching a show. Or, when you remember you recently went grocery shopping: Water or watermelon Poppi? But, by and large, there's a thoughtless smoothness to the experience of getting yourself a beverage. Same goes for lifting it to your lips and taking a sip. You don't debate it or analyze it. You don't even seem to make the decision to do it. It just gets done.
This holds true even with bigger stuff.
Whether or not to accept a job offer or move to a new city, to have children or to buy a house. It sure feels like there's more riding on these decisions! And certainly there might be more thought narrating the experience of deciding these things. But these decisions just get done, all the same.
Our minds come in and take credit for them, but really, the actual decisions happen in a place that exists beyond thought. The best name I've got for that place is "flow," but a word can only point us in a direction; it can't really capture what we're talking about here.
This is where you might have to relax your focus a little, to understand what I'm getting at, because it gets (more) nebulous.
A decision appears to be a thing we make happen. It seems solid and looks real. Society reinforces this understanding. You might be sitting there, thinking, Decisions are real, Helen! I have proof! And I believe you. I'm sure your mind has very compelling proof. Minds are good at that.
But bear with me a second and see if you can briefly entertain something different.
How I've come to see it is: When something needs to be decided, a decision gets made. Thought is simply a layer over the top of an event that’s otherwise occurring, quite naturally, on its own. It just happens to be the layer that we see most readily (and that society tells us we have to manage), so it looks essential to the process.
When a particular decision feels intractable, it's a sign that we're mired in a ton of thinking about the situation—not a sign that the decision, itself, is difficult to arrive at.
From a young age, we're conditioned to believe that we steer our lives. We're responsible for "making the right decisions" to get the outcomes we want. We're conditioned to believe we have to "think things through" before a decision gets made, and so, that's what we do. We marinate, we hem and haw, we ask the people close to us to weigh in.
That layer of thought gets thicker and thicker, and if the "correct" decision still isn't clear to us, we believe we need to think harder and consider more. It's like we're straining to be fortune tellers! We want more, more, more information about the as-yet-unknown future before we're willing to make a move.
But what happens if we release all that? If we allow the thinking to settle down on its own, the mind to get quiet and still.
I don't know about you, but I've found time and time again that a decision...just...sort of...happens. Clarity emerges (turns out it was there the whole time, buried underneath my thinking) and I do what needs to be done, whatever occurs to me to do, without all the noise of thought.
What do you think?
Tell me what's coming up for you. What kind of relationship do you have with decision-making? Do you think of yourself as indecisive? Are you a pro/con list-maker? Perhaps you survey everyone you know to find out what they would do if they were in your position?
Does the perspective I've shared change anything for you? What do you notice when you tap into that place that precedes thought?
Drop a comment below and let's discuss. (I always reply to your comments, though Squarespace doesn't seem to ping you after I've done so 🤔, so be sure to check back here after a few days.)