Every Decision You Make is Emotional
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Every Decision You Make is Emotional

I know we all like to think of ourselves as rational beings but, unfortunately, this isn’t what the science tells us. In order for us to do anything at all we need to be motivated and motivation is always affective. The components that make it up are split, equally, into Approach and Avoidance.

The former makes us gravitate towards certain choices (like eating something sweet instead of spinach) and the latter makes us avoid other choices (like doing a lot of hard labor for no reward). When our emotional choices are aligned with our ideas, opinions and principles we find it easy to justify them using rationality so that the choices we made appear logical. When they’re not, we stick to our guns, obey our emotions and put our unwillingness to bow to reason to such unquantifiable qualities as “gut feelings”, a “sixth sense”, or a “bad feeling”. 

We all live now in what the military calls a VUCA world where VUCA stands for Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity. In case you didn’t immediately recognize it, this is a direct mapping from the battlefield to the boardroom via the Big Data vectors of Volume, Velocity, Variety and Veracity.

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Whether we look at the world through the prism of big data analytics or battlefield strategy and tactics what is certain is that the clearly defined, black & white certainties of the past are no longer in play. Instead, both businesses and armies have to deal with constantly shifting goals, moving parameters and complex situations that require analytical, focused thinking.

Every decision we make leads to an outcome. Wrong decisions, inevitably, rob us of the outcomes we are looking to achieve. Decisions are based on structure (the way our brains work) and process (the way our minds respond). Everything takes effort and energy. Everything we think and feel is traceable to a physical stimulus that initiates a response. 

Emotional thinking is bad for us because it misdirects our energy and shuts down the higher executive functions of our brain so we cannot assess just how bad our choices are until some time after we have made them.

Embrace Do Not Deny

The solution to this predicament lies not in denying our emotions but embracing them. By accepting that our responses are emotional we rob them of their power to control us. An acknowledged emotional response is an emotional response that’s subject to our higher executive functions of analysis and deduction. And where analysis and deduction are present, reason is not far behind.

We discussed some of this at a recent webinar held by SEMRush that looked at Critical Decision Making.

It is only by putting in place a structured approach to dealing with the less visible, more impulsive and unruly parts of our self that we can hope to achieve the kind of focus and discipline that helps us achieve the outcomes we expect.

Adopted from The Sniper Mind: Eliminate Fear, Deal with Uncertainty, and Make Better Decisions

My follow-up book: Intentional: How To Live, Love, Work and Play Meaningfully

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