The art and science of wise life choices
When was the last time you made a decision that you knew, deep down, was the wrong thing to do? We’ve all done it, haven’t we? We’ve all got a story to share about a relationship that shouldn’t have been entered into; a job that made you miserable; or that time you invested in education for a career path that your heart just wasn’t that into. Not to mention all those times that you didn’t take a chance on something -or someone- when a part of you really wanted to?
What’s your story? And what if you could make wiser choices in the future?
The logical next step
Over the last few hundred years, the world has had an obsession with head based rational thinking. As a culture, we have learned to believe that rationality should prevail over traditional heart focused and intuitive gut based ways of knowing when we’re making our decisions.
You will have, at times, experienced conflict between your thoughts, feelings and actions. And, when that happens, you know something isn’t quite right, yet all the rational data points to a certain option. ‘It was the logical next step’ is something I have heard time and time again from people questioning their past decisions, admitting their failure to recognise emotion as real information.
Too often, we ignore the small, quiet voice deep inside us or the simple sense of uneasiness we feel about a situation. If we can’t explain something, we tend to overlook it. After all, how can we confidently act on nothing more than a felt-sense when we are not fully aware of the underlying reasons for its occurrence?
But, what if that logical next step isn’t the wisest choice for you?
The wisdom within
Understanding how you use your head, heart and gut intelligences to either limit yourself or empower yourself is crucial to your success and happiness in life.
Throughout the world, more and more people are realising the importance of intuition in their life choices -and even in leadership decisions! In Japan, business people reference decisions made with haragei (which can be translated as the ‘art of the stomach’) as equally valid as logic and bottom line accounting methods.
It’s clear that many people do have an awareness that feelings of incongruence within us occur in response to our environment, with a sense that these feelings are providing information about the options we have available to us. But, how can we convince our own logical minds of the value of that deep sense of ‘knowing’ we all feel yet, rarely understand?
The science of wise decision-making
Over the last decade or so, advances in the field of Neuroscience have uncovered some intriguing findings.
We now know that you have a complex, functional neural network in both your heart and your gut. These networks are sufficiently sophisticated to qualify as an intelligent ‘brain’ in its own right. Your heart and gut can process information, learn, remember, feel and sense.
What this means is that you have three separate intelligence centres -or ‘brains’- operating within you! Each has their own domain of expertise with a different way of operating, processing the world and communicating. Findings indicate that for each of these three neural networks, there are three distinct prime functions:
- Heart — Processing emotions, values, relational affect
- Gut — Mobilisation, core identity and self-preservation
- Head — Cognitive perception, thinking and making meaning
Effective, wise decision-making requires that you use all of the intelligence available to you — going well beyond that of just your ‘head brain’.
How do you use your multiple brains?
Think of a complex decision you have made that, with hindsight, turned out to be a poor decision. Which of your intelligences were involved in making that decision? Which did you not listen to?
Now, contrast that with a successful decision. This time, did you go with your head, heart or gut? Was there a consensus between all three?
What was the difference between your decision-making processes for the two situations?
It’s clear that when your three intelligence centres are aligned and coherent, you operate at your most confident and effective. On the other hand, while when they are misaligned, your decisions and judgement can become impaired.
Misalignment can occur all too easily, as Grant Soosalu and Marvin Oka highlight in their book . We may use one intelligence to the exclusion of others; one may be doing the job of, or overriding, another; or our intelligence centres may be in conflict with each other. It becomes necessary to increase your intuitive abilities to make wiser choices in your life.
This is the power of mBIT
mBIT ( multiple Brain Integration Techniques) is strongly based on valid science and informed by thousands of years of insightful esoteric wisdom. It is a powerful and deeply insightful new field that advances the fields of NLP and Personal Development.
What does this mean for you? I’m glad you asked me… for you, this means increased levels of emergent wisdom in your decision-making, resulting in greater success and happiness in a world of massive change. This can be seen as confidently making wise life choices that are aligned with your true nature; your authentic self.
Coaching incorporating m BIT will provide you with clear techniques to harness and align the intelligence of all of your multiple brains to make wiser choices from a place of coherence.
Want to know more about how mBIT coaching could help you? Get in touch with us here.
Originally published at https://quietconnections.co.uk on May 1, 2016.
