Mindfulness and Making the Right Choices

16.1.2017

Every day we make decisions. Some are inconsequential, others change our lives – forever. When you’re faced with a difficult decision, it’s easy to get caught up in the sometimes circular, worrisome and irrational processes of your own mind. Mindfulness can give you the tools you need to make decisions with more purpose, so you can live more of the life you want.

 

The mind during decision-making

The human mind naturally wanders, and even more so when there’s a tough decision to make.

 

Take a typical example. A man in his mid-twenties has a new job offer. He thinks: how far is the workplace from home? Will it give me satisfaction? Will it give me more or less social time? Is there room for progression? Is it really better than my current job? What kind of people will I be working with? All these turn over and over in his mind.

 

Then, the opinions of, and the consequences for, other people come into play: will his girlfriend want him to take the job, his dad says it’s not enough of a pay increase, his friend works there and wants me to join him.

 

Alongside the noise of all this thinking, he’s also preoccupied with other matters: his deadline for Friday is looming; he mustn’t forget his mum’s birthday; should he buy a new shirt for the interview; how his team is doing in the league; and so on.

How mindfulness can help

When making big decisions, we’re all subject to a variety of cognitive biases. Daniel Kahneman, for example, has written about these in his wonderful ‘Thinking Fast and Slow’ A classic example of this is the ‘sunk-cost bias’. This is a bias that comes about when the investment of time and money we have made in a project in the past affects our decision-making in the present.

 

“Yes, it seems not to be going very well, but we’ve invested so much in it. Now is not the time to turn back!”

 

That can be disastrously faulty thinking. No matter how much we invested in the past, the key issue is will the project deliver what we want from it in the present and future?

 

Hafenbrack et al, 2013 found that people who practiced mindfulness were more resistant to sunk-cost bias.

 

Mindfulness practices help the mind to quieten and focus on the present moment. At least for a time, we come away from regretful thoughts about the past or anxious thoughts about the future.

 

By being more focused in the moment, Hafenbrack et al found people were more likely to overlook previous investments when making a decision.

 

For example, if someone had worked for a company for a decade or more, the investment of time that represents can make it difficult to leave. Mindfulness practice would make it easier to let that investment go and approach the decision more clearly.

 

When we meditate, and become more aware of our ever-changing thoughts and feelings, it becomes easier to sort through these and decide which are relevant and need to be given more attention. Many are fleeting and irrelevant, some need real attention. Mindfulness training connects us to ourselves in ways that allow our decisions to come more naturally.

Living with purpose

When you have a problem or there’s a decision that needs to be made, you might try calling it to mind for a few moments before a session of mindfulness meditation. Then, put it aside – at least to some extent. If you begin to dwell on it during the meditation, notice that and gently come away. People often find when they try this, that during or after meditation, the solution becomes clear.

 

By being more discerning of your thoughts and feelings, decisions arise more easily, even the very simple ones. Living with mindfulness helps us reduce confusion, so we can develop a gut reaction response to decisions-making.

 

Decision-making has the potential to hold us back, and prevent us from living to our full potential. Mindfulness allows decision-making to be made with greater ease and conviction so we don’t miss out on the opportunities that come out way.

 

To find out more about how mindfulness training helps with decision making, contact  rachel@mindfulnessworks.com or call (+44) 01223 750660.