How to make good decisions Emotion vs Reason

To make decisions, for a long, long time, psychologists have proposed the list of "advantages and disadvantages", "the positive and the negative" now we know how wrong we were, that list is not worth, everything is much simpler ... I'll tell you.

Look at the shirt, the dress, the clothes you are wearing, what led you to buy it? Did you like it or did you need it? Or did you just want it? Or both at the same time?

And your car, champagne color? Is it that color because the insurance is cheaper or did you verify that the number of accidents with that color is statistically lower?

When I decided thirty-five years ago for the Faculty of Psychology, what do you think determined my decision? The illusion or the full employment of my profession.?

And my decision to live as a couple? How would it have sounded at the altar, if instead of "YES I WANT" I had pronounced:

• Yes I have to marry you
• Yes i can marry you

And your house? Your furniture, the curtains, the color of the walls, the size of the television ... Why is it the way it is??

And what would you answer to the question about the reasons that prompted you to have children?

I have two, the answer for me is very simple: I wanted, I wanted it, I wanted it, I dreamed of it ... That is to say, pure emotion.

In conclusion, when we make decisions, from the simplest to the most complex, actually the first thing we do is decide with emotion.

And everything is that simple: emotion sets us in motion, the first thing is, do I want to or don't?

And if I do not want a car, children, a house or a wedding, then I no longer think about it, simply because I do not want to, EMOTION IS THE FIRST KEY IN DECISION MAKING. (And this is also known at the neurological level, studies in patients with lesions in the amygdala, clearly confirm the direct connection between decision-making and emotion, it is known that a healthy amygdala makes us be cautious and prudent when it comes to take decisions)

Then comes the "I can or I can't"

Once we decide that we want to buy a car, a house, have children ... or simply a shirt and the emotion sets us in motion is when it appears reason, which guides us in making decisions.

It is then when the famous list appears, where we analyze from reason, different elements:

• We study with calculator in hand, the maximum price of the apartment that we want to buy, of the installments that we can pay monthly ...

• We reflect on whether we have reasonable hours to take care of the children we want to have, if our economy can afford it ...

• We analyze the number of seats and the size of the trunk that the car we want to buy must have ...

• We investigate about the best university to go to, the quality / price ratio of the master ...

And after the analysis of the I can or I can not, sometimes we have to decide that we are not going to buy the champagne color car that we like so much, because we have to wait six months to save a little more ...

Or we decided to postpone our wedding for a year, since in that year we will have completed the pile of projects that we have open, the master, finish the work of the house, consolidate the new company ... and so we can enjoy that much desired wedding even more.

In summary

When you have to make a decision that brings you upside down, for the decision making simplify the process:

A) Ask yourself the first question: Do I want to have children?

That's when you have to observe your emotional reaction, What makes you feel that question Do I feel like it, I smile when I think about it, I dream about it, I imagine it and that imagination makes me feel joy, illusion?

1) If the answer is affirmative, let reason pass and analyze carefully if you can, if your current circumstances allow it and that the fulfillment of that wish and its realization will allow you to continue enjoying it emotionally.

2) If the answer is that you cannot, consider the action plan concrete that you have to carry out to make what you want to become a reality in a planned future.

B) If the answer is negative or “buts” appear, the decision-making process is over.

The answer is "I don't want to" and that's what you have to say to yourself or whoever asks you "I don't want to, I don't feel like it, I don't want it ..."

We are emotion and reason, we have two tools to use, two elements that, applied with balance, optimize and facilitate our lives.

To pretend to live exclusively from reason is absurd, to do it only from dangerous emotion.

The lesson we have reached today is that emotional intelligence implies balance between reason and emotion..

In decision making, our emotions must mobilize us and our reason guide us. And in that order.