Humans, like computers, consist of parts: body, mind, and intelligence. The body is physical, varying in appearance but fundamentally similar in composition. The mind is a collection of thoughts and emotions, while intelligence encompasses our experiences and decision-making abilities. Our ego, the sense of self, is that one thread that ties these aspects together. Ego attaches to one or more these parts at the same time influencing our perceptions and reactions to situations.
Conflicts in decision making occurs when the ego constantly fluctuates between mind and intellect, creating a conflict between them. This can be beneficial, as it encourages thorough decision-making, but can also lead to analysis paralysis, where no decision is made due to overthinking. This is more likely when emotions are strong, or intelligence is lacking or both.
The contrary approach of quick decision can be equally dangerous, as purely intellectual decisions may not reflect emotional reality, and only rely on objective dryness. Balanced decision making is that one that reflects harmony between mind and intellect.
When one experiences lack of harmony leading to analysis paralysis in decision making, his intellect gets tired. There are several ways to train our personality for such balanced decision making, through harmony between mind and intellect.
First is to let the tired intellect rest. Constant analysis leads to fatigued intellect and allows mind to take over the control, prompting irrational decision. Thus, “sleep over it” – as they say. Resting intellect enables it to gather more data from its memory bank of past experiences, churn it appropriately to understand consequences of a decision.
Second, rely on any external trustworthy resource for help. This is extremely helpful as external resource acts as extension of intellect by providing more, better data and experiences and fewer emotional baggage. Of course, such external resource should be trustworthy, so that even mind will accept its intervention (trust is an emotion, thus governed by mind).
Finally, challenge your mind by investigating your emotions. Why is it that mind is not aligning with purely logical and rational decision offered by intellect? What is driving emotions so strong that such conflict not only exists but prolongs. This forces mind to cooperate with intellect and justify its emotional needs, which is a tough exercise.
All of the above helps you in decision making process. While brushing this process aside risks poor decisions, following it may still not lead to the perfect decision – as there is no such thing as perfect decision. The process only increases the probability of such a decision that is beneficial to you and other stakeholders for a reasonably long period of time. Even if such decision turns out to be unfavorable, the process followed enables one to quickly pinpoint faults in decision making and intellect gets refined for any future decision making. That is what makes us human, we learn, we evolve. That’s what evolution is. We’re a little less animal after that, right? So, start thinking deep, before any significant decisions, but in a right way.
Happy decision making.
Leave a Reply