When confronted with hard decisions, it can be easy to try to avoid making that decision.
What makes them hard, is that they trigger emotions. It can happen while seeking to make decisions as well as by resisting the need to make a decision.
In dealing with such situations, the first step is to simply acknowledge that emotions are involved. As simple as that, it allows to notice what emotions and feelings are present. It’s knowledge that can assist in reconnecting with one’s ability to think. An ability that is never gone but can easily be taken over by the presence of emotions, especially when resisting them.
A way to resist emotions is by seeking to distract oneself from them. And there can be something to it, especially if the emotion is overwhelming and needs to be processed first.
But oftentimes, there is also an established habit to seek distraction when uncomfortable emotions appear. It’s a learned method to avoid discomfort.
The poet John Keats once described the ability to stay in that space as Negative Capability and explained it as the ability “of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.”
One of the ways people use to reach “after fact & reason” is by searching for a technique or solution they can use to solve the problem or make the decision. The idea here is that it is possible to determine the data that will deliver the decision one is looking for.
However, that rarely works.
Someone who wants to buy shoes may start with the size he needs, and possibly add some other details to describe what he is looking for. But, to know if the shoes are a good fit, he will start by looking for the ones he likes and then try them on. He’s combining intuition and senses.
When learning to play golf people start by learning some basic principles like grip, stance, alignment, and position. But when it comes to the swing, the movement is actually too quick to get all the data that would help know what happened.
As a beginner, it’s quite confusing. Hence the desire to find techniques to transform the swing.
When asked if they can feel the swing or what they can feel of the club when it moves or strikes the ball, the answer regularly is that they can’t sense it. They then continue that it’s the reason why they rely on techniques.
It’s how they leave their ability to develop their intuition aside.
Intuition is our ability to recognize patterns. It happens on the edge of consciousness and is how the mind has learned to perceive and interpret subtle signals. These signals are typically overlooked by logical reasoning, often because they are too fast for it to stay with them.
But training and practice can push the edge of consciousness further out and thus make more patterns available.
And no, it’s not decisions that need to be trained. It’s the ability to notice patterns that can be found in the data, processes, and human activities that need to be trained. They contribute to our intuition. It’s how tapping into intuition can assist decision-making.
