How I Coach My Clients to Help Them Make Better Decisions
A self-coaching technique for clearer thinking and better decision making
“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.” — Richard Feynman
How well do you know your own mind, understand your behavior, or trust your decision-making? Based on my experience of working as an executive coach and mentor over the last couple of years, I’m going to guess not as much as you think you do.
We all like to believe that we make rational decisions and have a good grasp of why we behave the way we do. It certainly feels that way. But if we believe that, we fall foul of Feynman’s first principle.
We fool ourselves all the time.
The human brain is the most complex living structure that we know of. How foolish can we be to think that we have mastered it or truly understand ourselves? No matter how lucid our thinking, there is a truth we conveniently ignore:
We are often unaware of the reasons behind the decisions we make.
We may think we are making rational decisions when we go about our business, but that’s not always the case. As this New York Times article states,
