When Choice Is Difficult

Vanilla ice-cream – you can’t beat it and I find that I usually pick that flavour, possibly with a chocolate dip, on a hot sunny day.

Ruby Wax writes in her book ‘Frazzled’: Choice is ruining our lives, taking up precious moments. She goes on to suggest that 99% of our lives is now taken up by the act of deciding, quoting that 40 odd years ago we had only two flavours of icecream to pick from – vanilla or strawberry. Now there are over 1,000.

Stress is constant in our lives and having to make constant decisions is overloading our limits, pushing us into neural fatigue. Stress involves the production of cortisol which drenches our bodies with that jittery ‘gotta keep moving’ feeling – proof that our head and body is a system and worth acknowledging! 

A client I had was plagued by being in ‘one thousand minds’ over a decision about travelling.  She was 22 and eager to see the world.  Looking at her problem it seemed rather exciting as her options were endless. But nothing felt right. Unsurprisingly she was unable to be satisfied with any ideas and was stuck in her indecision. Her ‘one thousand minds’ were just looping around, not helping much!

I have always wanted choice – a lack of choice is too limiting, yet when presented with so many choices I too notice that internal feeling of not being able to make the decision. That uncomfortable physical feeling about whether I did the right option. Was there something I didn’t know about? Will I suffer any envy from not taking a different option?  Buyers’ remorse with the unlimited array of information available to us over the internet.  If we are not suffering paralysis by analysis, we are making the decision and instantly regretting our choice.   

Sometimes we are presented with some really big decisions like changing a job, making a move to another country or something else that is a cross roads in our life. But we also have many decisions to make each day – from choosing a restaurant, to picking the road to take to get us there, or where to shop for a new wardrobe item or which movie to see.  

To make an aligned, happy or satisfying decision believe it or not, the whole body needs to be involved – the somatic (body) mind and the cognitive (our head) mind. Making a decision involves the cognitive mind for its logic, creative  and reasoning capabilities, but it also involves our somatic mind whose capabilities involve our values, emotions, identity and safety. 

So for the next time you find yourself stuck in making a decision, try this. 

1.    Take a few minutes to breath in a balanced way – in for a count of 6 and out for a count of 6. 

2.    Breathe as if your heart is doing the breathing. Ask your heart what is truly important to it about the option. Is it important or of value at all? 

3.    Breathe as if your head is doing the breathing and ask your head what is really important to it regarding the options available. 

4.    Breathe as if your gut is doing the breathing. Ask your gut what is deeply important to it regarding the options. 

You may be surprised at what comes to you with the answers as you check in with each information centre – being the heart, the head and the gut.

I have made some cracking mistakes which, upon hindsight, were not aligned in the making of the decision. You may have a memory of a decision that didn’t go well – where you stubbornly went ahead with something that you weren’t even interested in – you had no heart in it. Or maybe where, upon looking back, you thought ‘what was I thinking’ – maybe there was all heart and no logic in that decision.  Or maybe a relationship was more about ‘consuming’ another person than connecting to them on a loving, heart level. Maybe driven by fear. 

Being in an aligned state is the hands down best way to make a decision. 

So my client who wanted to go travelling? She came up with the ‘least exciting’ option of working for another year. She knew with a solid and calm bodily feeling that what she had decided upon was the best choice, and her one thousand minds turned into just one calm one.  She was really surprised with the message she got during the coaching session – that she had loads of time, so what was the hurry.

mBraining is the process I have outlined. It is about checking in with each information centre to make sure you have a balance, aligned result for your decision, and each time I coach a client using this modality I am amazed and delighted with the transformation that results. Transformation that stays with the client after they leave the room, as permanent changes. From indecisions to forgiveness, health to habits and compulsions.

And the next time I am presented with a thousand ice-cream options I am still going to pick Vanilla – because I love it!