There are many choices we make in our lives. Some are good and some are bad. We consider good choices as those that give us no trouble. Bad ones create outcomes that cause us discomfort and trouble from others. To be honest, most of us live a trouble-free life. But the advance of technology demanding higher productivity and loss of many industrialized jobs have increased stress. The pandemic has also blurred the lines between work and personal life. All these changes are prone to increasing our stresses and contribute to unwise decision-making. So in this post, we explore why we make bad decisions.
Why We Choose Unwisely
We may think of all possibilities that lead to unwise choices. However, the decisions we make involve others, and we can never really know what they are thinking. Therefore, asking why can be a futile exercise in finding out why we choose unwisely.
Rather than ask many whys, mindfulness goes into the experience by asking what and how? What does it feel like in the body when a certain choice has been made? How does the outcome of our choices affect our emotions? What does that emotion do to our body? What thoughts lead to those emotions?
Experiencing vs Living in the Head
We highly prize rational and intellectual reasoning in our world. If our intellect is indeed the best we can do as humans, why is there so much strife and wars in the world? We ought to ask ourselves if our intellectual beliefs reflect reality or actually reject reality?
The intellect is useful if we can direct it properly. But when our minds are filled with numerous opinions from news to social media, it is hard to think your way to the truth. What is the truth? How can truth lead us to make wise decisions?
Use Your Conscience as a Guide
The simplest way to be guided in making wise choices is by our conscience. We may think we care for our well-being, but we are so lost in our thoughts we are unaware of our conscience in our modern-day life. The word conscience may sound even archaic. Who talks about conscience these days? We talk about good decisions as something that brings us the most benefits and profits.
Prioritizing benefits, profits, and meeting expectations over our conscience can bring dire effects. Where do you feel your conscience? You may feel it in your heart. In Mindfulness-Based Strategic Awareness Training, we can say our BETA represents our conscience.
By becoming aware of our BETA (Body sensations, emotions, thoughts, and action impulse), we can begin to experience what actually is well-being and what are the consequences of the lack of well-being.
Watch the video in this post to find out what causes bad decisions and how you can start to choose wisely.
