In our last post, we shared the wisdom of replacing ease with unease in your heart. In this post, we will talk about how having ease in your heart helps you make better decisions.
How we make decisions
We make many decisions throughout the day. There are many small decisions we make throughout the day we do not take note of. Such as what to eat for lunch. Whether to go to the toilet now or later since there is no urgency? If we should exercise today and what shows to catch up on Netflix? These decisions go by so quickly we don’t notice them.
The decisions we do pay attention to involves choices like, where to invest our money, what is the next career move, who to network with, how to make more sales, and so on. When it comes to survival, we think more deeply about trade-offs. But all of these decisions we make have one thing in common. That commonality is how each decision benefits us. While the decision to eat an entire tub of ice-cream in an hour may not sound beneficial, it is beneficial in that moment that it satisfies the craving.
Most of the decisions made are made from our perspective, which may or may not involve others. But the impulse underlying most decisions is to benefit ourselves.
Making Decisions without Ease
When we are feeling restless, or even slightly agitated, we are often unable to listen to others. Stress or dread towards our jobs or towards someone we live with often make us choose decisions that make us feel better. This is obvious since we do not want dread or misery so the choice is simple. This lack of ease in the heart causes us to make lop-sided decisions because we want to feel better.
The other kind of unease in the heart is the feeling of lethargy and fatigue. This state also causes us to choose based on what does not require us to expend more energy. In this state, we also tend to make decisions to benefit ourselves.
Making Decisions with Ease
Someone who feels at ease and at peace with himself or herself seldom feels agitated. Without the mind trying to run to somewhere else to feel better, one tends to be able to have clarity in the mind to make a good decision that benefits oneself and the other person. That is because a person with clarity in mind and feeling peace within would not want to make decisions to cause another to feel restless or agitated. It is precisely the fact that one is aware of the harm done to oneself and others due to stress that leads one to train the mind.
Of course, this does not mean a person who has trained his or her mind with ease can escape total stress or fatigue. The only difference between a person who has trained his or her mind and another who is untrained is the ability to know how to calm the mind despite conditions. For example, if a mindful person feels stressed, he or she would take a moment to breathe in and out gently or to think of something happy. A mindful person who feels fatigued would see the cause of it and take time to rest as opposed to being upset s/he is not able to be up and about and be active.
How having ease can help make decisions at work
As explained, when one is calm, one is able to make better decisions because there is awareness in the mind not to act on impulse. Even if decisions may have been made on impulse, a person who is aware would try to remedy it so that everyone involved in the decision would experience ease within.
In the workplace, a manager may have to make decisions causing others stress. For instance, the decision to retrench another person who needs the job may be a difficult one. It however does not mean someone who is calm and aware refuse to make such decisions when needed. However, how that decision is made and then communicated to the staff involved makes a lot of difference.
It is like being sent to the hospital and having the doctors and nurses treat you as just another piece of meat or a person with feelings that comes through the door. The difference is made when the manager or the doctor is aware of the situation and the fear in the employee or patient’s mind. The manager can speak gently and not hold grudges if the staff involved might get agitated. A doctor too can be gentle and understanding in speech and not hold grudges if a patient is rude. That is because there is the awareness to treat oneself and another with care and ease.
Learn how to make good decisions while acquiring skills to train your mind towards ease with Mindfulness-Based Strategic Awareness Training with us.
