In our life's journey, we get to a point where we need to make an important decision that involves two or more potential choices. Typically, each option is a viable one, but each one presents positive and negative ramifications.
How do we decide which is the best option to pick? The right path to take?
There are scores of books, articles, flow charts, processes and people ready to give an answer to that question. Interestingly enough, just like the complexity facing the decision-maker, the solution providers offer just as many choices further exasperating the task at hand.
But it seems to me that the most important driver in these important decisions tends to be a non-scientific, unjustifiable, indescribable one. Well, there is one universal term I'm aware of for it....
Your gut.
We all have had that experience. That moment when something just feels right. We are filled with a sudden sense of calm. Sereneness. A small smile may emerge or even a gentle nodding of our heads. We might even think to ourselves - ah yes, this all makes sense now.
Sometimes it's not what we logically anticipated as the right answer at all. It might even be the polar opposite. Or an option not seriously considered or maybe one not even thought of in the first place. It may be just acknowledging that what we felt was the best option really is the best, but perhaps reconciling it will be the toughest to implement. The more difficult road versus the path of least resistance. Or visa-versa.
Of course then the question becomes - how is our gut formed and should we trust it? On this, there are scores of opinions too.
Here's mine: our "gut" is a combination of two things - logic and intuition. Our gut is the beautiful swirling together of these aspects of our human-ness as they reconcile the struggle to unify and agree to a final decision.
Our logical side wants the decision to be bullet-proof in it's selection rationale. This is fed by a tremendous amount of external input - our own life experiences, opinions of others, facts, data and trends that may be overlaid, intertwined and pulled apart to systematically review each option and winnow away the inferior option. Leaving just the best for last.
Our intuition wants us to solely rely on the intangibles to make the decision. Feelings and emotions. And how we "read" the feelings and emotions of others as they react to the various choices. Past experiences also come into play - but often recalling the emotional connection tied to those past decisions - not necessarily the resulting outcomes.
In the end, all this information stops swirling and comes to rest. Whether in a quiet moment or while walking among thousands on a busy city street, the decision, and realization we have made the decision, just seems to hit us in the pit of our stomach. Our gut has spoken.
Should we trust our gut? I believe so. We have read countless stories of times where individuals have made a decision despite being adamantly urged or pressured to select or choose something to the contrary. When they are proven right, the words, "it just felt like the right thing to do at the time" seem to magically appear over and over.
Can our gut be wrong? Of course. But I believe that the vast majority of times we can sense the right path to take, decision to make, future to pursue, if we dim the chorus of complexity and listen closely to what our simplistic inner-self is trying to say.
Our logical side wants the decision to be bullet-proof in it's selection rationale. This is fed by a tremendous amount of external input - our own life experiences, opinions of others, facts, data and trends that may be overlaid, intertwined and pulled apart to systematically review each option and winnow away the inferior option. Leaving just the best for last.
Our intuition wants us to solely rely on the intangibles to make the decision. Feelings and emotions. And how we "read" the feelings and emotions of others as they react to the various choices. Past experiences also come into play - but often recalling the emotional connection tied to those past decisions - not necessarily the resulting outcomes.
In the end, all this information stops swirling and comes to rest. Whether in a quiet moment or while walking among thousands on a busy city street, the decision, and realization we have made the decision, just seems to hit us in the pit of our stomach. Our gut has spoken.
Should we trust our gut? I believe so. We have read countless stories of times where individuals have made a decision despite being adamantly urged or pressured to select or choose something to the contrary. When they are proven right, the words, "it just felt like the right thing to do at the time" seem to magically appear over and over.
Can our gut be wrong? Of course. But I believe that the vast majority of times we can sense the right path to take, decision to make, future to pursue, if we dim the chorus of complexity and listen closely to what our simplistic inner-self is trying to say.
Photo By Mitya Ilyinov (originally posted to Flickr as crossroads) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
