Letting Go of Certainty: The Art of Making Confident Decisions

Spam Filter For Your Brain - Episode 146

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Most of us have a complete myth of certainty that we believe is a prerequisite for us to take action. While we have a whole load of decisions in front of us.

We're all guilty of it. I would be absolutely astounded if you weren't. This episode is about how we think that we would know if we're going to make the right decision because it's going to feel really certain. And I'm here with the devastating news that certainty is really rare.

I think most of us think about the idea of certainty as this idea that when we have a whole load of things in front of us or we have a really big decision that we need to make, we're going to know what the right thing to do is because it's going to feel right. And that is us putting the idea of our feeling of certainty or our feeling of confidence to be on an external circumstance, which is us making the right decision, and that decision making us feel good.

And if you've been around these parts for any length of time, you'll know that I strongly disagree with the idea that your external circumstances cause your feelings. I think that your emotions come from your brain and your thoughts and the things that you think. And if you disagree with that, I would put forward the idea that if it was the external circumstances that caused our emotions, then we'd all feel the same way about the same stuff all the time. And I don't think that happens.

When it comes to decision making. We can quite often think that if we make the right decision, then life, the other side of the decision is going to be all rosy and good and gold and we're never going to have to feel any rubbish things ever again. We're going to have this walk in the park life because we've done the good thing, we've made the right decision and we know where we're going from here on in.

But most of us have made quite a lot of decisions in our life. And every decision that I've ever made, for sure, seems to have an awful lot of life on the other side of it as well, thank goodness. Haven't made any that are life-ending yet.

This idea of trying to picture what life might be like on the other side, even though it sounds like it's an obstacle, may actually be a really useful way to help us try and make decisions. Because when we imagine this future without any kind of negativity, any uncertainty, any frustration, any judgment of ourselves for having made the wrong decision or having not taken that alternative path, we can kind of get ourselves lost in avoiding things we don't want to, rather than concentrating on the things that we do actually want.

We're hoping that everything is going to feel good, the other side, and that it absolutely won't contain any kind of uncertainty or any kind of regret or any bad feelings or ill feelings or voices in our head telling us that we didn't do the right thing.

I want to propose that maybe it's possible that the other side of whatever decisions you can make, you're going to have the same brain. So you're probably going to have a lot of the same narrative. And when we can acknowledge that the other side of it is probably going to feel a lot like now, it's just some of the pieces and the scenery and maybe the places and the people might have changed, then we can decide ahead of time that we're probably going to have our own backs, or we could have our own backs no matter what happened.

When we flip and reverse it and you think, "okay, what would I really like to feel the other side of the decision?", rather than "What do I want the outcome to be in the circumstances?" Because circumstances can happen and we can feel all kinds of different things, or sometimes all kinds of different things in a single moment. It isn't the outcome that is going to dictate how you feel. It's the feeling that we're always going for.

So knowing that whatever circumstances happen, if you could spin a magic wheel, pull out of a tombola, the emotion that you want, no matter what decision is made, what do you want to feel? And then try to imagine what someone who was feeling that already might be thinking. And once you've nailed that and you have an idea as to the kind of thing that that person might be thinking and who that person is a little bit more, what decision would they make? Try and zoom ahead in time to future you who's already got the thing that you want, the emotion that you want, the feel that you want. And try to look at it from their point of view, what decision would that person make?

Because from there, we can kind of expand outward and envision a future for ourselves that hopefully grants us the tolerance, kindness, and compassion to speak to ourselves with a bit more humanity, regardless of what decision is made or what outcome occurs.

What we often try to do is concentrate on where we want to be. We try and spend an awful lot of time trying to avoid feeling any kind of discomfort. And uncertainty is a lot like discomfort.

If we're able to teach ourselves and practice ways to accept that uncertainty is part of the game. What we do is that we build self-trust in ourselves in the absence of guarantees by looking at how we're going to speak to ourselves no matter what happens.

And I believe that expanding ourselves to be able to accommodate a wider range of emotions reduces our desire and our drive for escapism to get rid of all of those horrible feelings and reduces the anxiety that we have that they might pop up - because we kind of know that they're going to.

So acknowledging that that's all part of life and it's going to arrive in some form or other, we don't waste so much time in avoidance trying to escape things that are inevitable as long as you're alive.

What it does is it enables us to have a bit more of a vision that is more aligned with our purpose, our values, our ethics, our morals, who we are as a character, and make decisions that are more in alignment with the things that we want more of in our lives rather than trying to avoid things, the things that we don't want to feel.

When we are willing to feel our feelings, a whole world of opportunity arrives to us, of the things that we could want, we could desire, and the kind of decisions that we could make. And that's how I believe that we always make the right decision. Because the right decision is always going to be the one where you treat yourself with more kindness.

I hope that is a useful little spin on things this week and I look forward to speaking to you next week.

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