TAPPING INTO YOUR BODY WISDOM MAKES CHOOSING SIMPLE.

Decision Making is Physical — Decision Making

I have learned to approach all things in life as a body. Since I am my body all the time, it makes sense to use my innate faculties. They were designed to serve me well, not to make life complicated. The ability to make decisions is a physical process.

But for many years before, I used to think that understanding — knowing with the mind — would solve my problems. This did, however, not happen in many cases. And I felt a bit stupid for (maybe) knowing the root of the problem but being unable to change it or myself. It was demotivating and some situations seemed hopeless. When I discovered body attention and awareness training as a tool for regaining self-confidence, I started connecting the dots between my thought patterns and my physical reactions. This is when things began to change.

A mundane but real example: I regularly stood in the supermarket aisle unable to decide which yogurt to buy. Full fat or low fat, the one in a plastic cup or glass, a local producer, or a.Knowing a lot and educating yourself can lead to indecision, sometimes even confusion. Life is full of contradictions, and the only way to make good decisions is to listen to your body, including your mind, but not limit your choices to it. Now, when I go with what's commonly termed gut feeling, I no longer feel inadequate. I still know the arguments in my head, but they don’t dominate my final choice and paralyze me. I am less busy having to be right and go for what feels right for me now. And I think that’s all anyone can do.

YOU NEED REASON & EMOTION TO MAKE GOOD DECISIONS

I am not a scientist but an avid reader of anything relevant to us professional humans and that might contain insights into how we can lead a good life. Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio suggests in his research that emotions are essential for decision-making and that without emotions, a person is unable to choose. He also said that there is a link between mental states, physical sensations, and emotions.

Damasio’s essential insight is that feelings are “mental experiences of body states,” which arise as the brain interprets emotions, themselves physical states arising from the body’s responses to external stimuli.

Doesn’t it sound reasonable to you that you need to involve all of yourself if you want to make good decisions for your life? And that a decision needs to be followed by a suitable action to lead to a good result in real life? This is what I am teaching as a somatic awareness and stress management expert—a process that integrates all levels of the human experience so you can use your potential freely and fully as is needed in the moment.

THE PROBLEM: VALUING THE MIND MORE THAN THE REST

It does make sense that the body, physical sensations, and emotions play a role in our decision-making, given that the brain is where all the information is collected. The problem might be that we give the brain and logical thinking so much more attention and importance than the rest of the body that we end up making decisions only based on data and our learned ideas of what good or socially acceptable decisions are. These do not necessarily have to be the right decisions for us.

Some factors that influence our decision making:

Social norms and the fear of breaking them
Self-imposed and external expectations and the fear of not meeting them
Your default decision-making mode

Your learned way of making decisions (some tend to base decisions only on reason and logic, others are more the “emotional” types)
Past experiences in similar situations

To identify all the different elements that influence your decision-making skills and free yourself of the default ways that limit you, you can use Thinking with the Body as a tool for self-discovery and creating change. Thinking with the body applies a combination of writing and reflection, physical exercises, and guided embodiment processes to guide you out of your habitual decision-making process into experiencing new possibilities.

Ultimately, all of the tools used, even the writing part, aim at creating a physical experience and a lasting impact for you. If it’s only in the mind, it won’t last or have an effect. A whole-body expertise is the basis for learning and paving the way for a change in your life.

What are your struggles in decision-making? Or what have you found to help make decisions you can stand entirely behind? Please share with us in the comments below!

(Originally posted on www.bodies-at-work.com )

Source: https://medium.com/@DanielaRazocher/decision-making-is-physical-c036d226e2fc