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Decision-making is a complex process, and yet we are faced with hundreds of decisions everyday. It is an exhaustive process, and most of us do it without giving it much thought. In fact, we believe that if we did give it much thought, we would become so overwhelmed as to not make any decisions at all. But what if the point was to THINK about a decision before it was made? Could we externalise this in the spur of the moment for those spontaneous decisions that we sometimes need to make to? Is it all about being rational and logical, and dismissing the emotional factors of our being?
Well, I am going to share with the you the secrets you need to know to make better decisions (for you), and give you reasons behind them, while also showing you why - as always - love is the glue that brings it all together. If you want to skip the insightful information I provide for you below and go straight to the "secret steps" (or you just can't wait), then just click here. Else you will find it towards the end of the article. Indeed, this is another decision for you to make - ever wondered why you chose the way you did?
For those that have stuck around, or have come back to see the reasoning behind my "secret steps", then you'll discover I have provided you with an additional six motivational secrets throughout the article. Just click where you see this sign 
to collect them. Print them out some plain stickers and place them where you can read them daily. They will help you to make better decisions.
We are all faced with thousands of decisions everyday. As the United Kingdom sees the hottest day in seven years, we make a choice whether we want to pull a sickie from work and go out to enjoy the sunny weather, or remain stuck in the office. As the "world waits" for news of a royal baby boy, you'll either wait in tow, or do everything you can to ignore what seems like preferential treatment for a beautiful baby that will be as precious as every other baby that is born into our world.
Some might see the continuation of royal families as something archaic, with the women merely treated as brood mares with a womb to drop heirs into the lap of a dynastic head, while some might celebrate because it's more primal and ancient and honest than that. It's simply that human beings love any opportunity to joyfully commune, and a baby being born into such a widely-known and well-loved family is just such an opportunity to come together happily and share in one of life's great joys. People like a reason to get together and party - and any reason will do.
The choice is yours to make. And we in the West are lucky to have that freedom of choice. When the news hit that a Norwegian woman had not only been raped in Dubai, but imprisoned for it, it hit home once again how lucky we are to have the freedoms we do in the West, but that we must also be aware that we cannot take our culture of freedoms with us when we travel. Dubai is a conservative Islamic place, and we have the choice not to go there if we feel our our cultural habits are going to mean we get "caught out" with serious consequences.
As lucky as we are for the freedom of choice, some would argue that it is an illusion. And according to science, the choices we make are often bad ones. Most of the time we believe we are behaving in the flow of the moment, but we are disconnected to the "Now", and rather base our choices on a past that was shaped by the hands of others. It seems it is the luck of the draw. If we were nurtured by great decision makers, then we have a strong likelihood to have strong decision-making capabilities ourselves. But then why is it most of us seem so bad at it?
It is an uncertain world, and we are doing the best we can - and often it feels like we are wrong. Scientists say our grip on reality is not as strong as we like to think, and to solve the problem we need to be more rational to deal with life's big decisions.
Now if I said that means using love, you would think me crazy. I can almost hear some of you say: Hang on? Doesn't love make us irrational? Isn't that thinking with the heart and not the head? I need to think clearly and take my emotions out of the equation to make a clear headed decision, right?
The problem is we often equate "love" with one-sides, or many sides of the same thing; but real love neither resides on the tongue, or the skin alone. It's not merely a descriptor to our feelings or a physical act that translates them, love can often be described as the indescribable core of the authentic self, which speaks to us via an inner voice, or our intuition. Although having a rational "clear head" is most certainly required when making decisions, some experts stress that our intuitive processes are also important when it comes to make the best decisions for ourselves.
When we discover true love for our authentic self, it is not egotistical, indeed it gives us a divine perspective, where we can take a step back and look at our problems from above, in the detached and rational manner the scientists suggest. This isn't to be objective in an aloof way, but is a method where you are connected to the flow of the now to see the larger scale of things, rather than focusing and feeling defeated over the current crisis and choices that face us.
Think of it as rationality with a heart. Once we have cleared the trash that has accumulated in our lives (initially through no fault of our own) and we have a clear communication line to the real core or "heart" of us, then we need to learn to trust in that intuitive instinct when we make choices.
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It's like internal mathematics, or cosmic number crunching of the factors we need to weigh in making a decision, but if we ignore the factor of the heart (however illogical that may sound to someone wanting to arrive at decision using logic) then often even if the choice is the right one, it may not be the right one for us. Sometimes not always making the choice with the best results is beneficial to us. Our "wrong" choices are just as helpful to our improvement, and to our attaining a greater understanding of our authentic self, as our "right" choices.
We we dream of the ideal man or woman we want to enter our lives we can often tell our friends what we want in that ideal partner. But can we be just as specific about what we don't want? Thus, our perceived failures can be markers to show us what we don't want, or that we are on a path not right for us, and further us on our journey more enlightened than before.
If we just used cold hard logic to get the best results every time, it would stunt our inner growth. And ultimately, it is the accumulation inside that counts, not the stuff we accumulate on the outside. Material goods are great, I love them too, because beautiful things can help us enjoy life, and lift our spirits from our daily troubles. But the real beauty we need to nurture first is the beauty within; without beauty inside we will fail to recognise the true beauty the world has to offer anyway. One compliments the other.
For instance, generating monetary wealth is beneficial for the opportunities it brings in our current society and the modern demands of the day, but generating spiritual wealth will always be relevant, because it is a timeless currency that is not dictated by fashion or the latest trends of the day.
Our emotions and feelings are also something which although will throw an algebraic style of decision making out of the window, as they are unpredictable, but without emotion we missing a large chunk of the equation. A computer may match people perfectly according to tastes and physical attractiveness, but then why is it some opposites attract?
Love isn't a balance of probabilities, loves goes against all probabilities, and an estrangement of our emotions (by taking them out of the equation when it comes to decision-making) can lead to a detrimental disconnectedness with our self and life - and sex life.
BBC Three ran an experiment they called "The Year of Making Love" which in effect launched Britain's biggest ever blind date. Hundreds of single people meet their scientifically compatible match and were followed to see if any would last a whole year. But can science even predict sexual attraction? Attraction is relative; the attributes that make you attractive to one may not be the same for another.
Is there a science to love? With some people there will be an immediate attraction, with some not at all, but if scientists are correct when they say sexual chemistry has a very short time span, then it is arguably the decisions we make that will make the relationship go any deeper.
From succeeding in our relationships, to choosing where to live, or even whether we should go to war, making decisions is an integral part of life. And when we look at how we make decisions, simply analysing a decision before we make it can be useful. Or more correctly, it is more beneficial to not only be aware of the requisite factors in making that decision, but how the decision-making process itself works.
For instance, we need to be aware that we can come to completely decisions on the same thing depending on how we look at a situation; sometimes we will make bolder decisions when we feel we have nothing to lose, or fear to take a chance because we might lose what we have already gained. We need to accept that as emotional human beings we are not always rational about decisions, because our emotions play a big role in our decisions.
We cannot remove them from the equation; the secret is to consciously make them a part of the decision-making process. When we work with the emotion-processing amygdala part of the brain it helps us to achieve balance. Neither our emotions or cool logic takes the upper hand in our decision-making process. This is why when we incorporate the spirit of love into our decision-making it helps us achieve this harmony, as love is a great balancer in life.
Love is the true balancer in life.
Gaining insight behind our decision-making makes us more capable to make the best decisions for us. When we do this, we not only externalise our decisions with greater awareness, we also allow for spontaneity in our decision-making. This insight also reveals the pitfalls that we need to watch out for when do make decisions, because sometimes it can appear as though our brains conspire against us.
Due to the fundamental relationship with our surroundings, we rely upon the world to be dependable when it isn't, or we sometimes can't see we are wrong once we have made up our minds about something. We get locked into a single mindset, and this is why getting a divine perspective can be useful. When we allow the destructive side of our emotions to get the upper hand, we often can't see the wood for the trees, and enter into things blindly - often with a blind rage that ends up hurting us more than we try to hurt others.
What we need to do therefore is make decisions from a raised perspective where we can take a look at the grander scale of things. We need to realise (and not just rationalise) that emotions are important to the decision making process, but that we need to in effect make every emotion flow from love. In doing so, we don't give in to the egocentricity of pure emotional behaviour, and can compromise rationally with the factors we need to juggle in making our decision.
Coming from this perspective also means that we limit our blind spots when it comes to the bad decisions we make. For many of us it is an either/or scenario. When we make a decision that has had a detrimental outcome, we either beat ourselves over our "failure" or when post rationalise it as a great decision when it clearly was anything but. What we need to do is accept the decisions for what they were, not as failures, but markers to wisdom, not because they were the right decisions necessarily, but they were useful decisions we can learn from.
We also need to be aware of our potential to be manipulated when we make a decision. There is scientific evidence that suggest we can be primed by what we watch or see or TV and in film, slipping thoughts and feelings into our subconscious to change our behaviour. Similarly, it is believed events in our childhood prime us to colour our thoughts and behaviours when we make decisions. If we are brought to believe we are failures because of events in our childhood, then we will make our decisions on that basis.
In my post "Love Knows No Failure", I talk about this form of "soul recovery" necessary to make sure we don't allow this to be a factor in the decisions we take. This also brings us to the extra factor we have as human beings to consider, which I have mentioned before in the article - that we are spiritual beings. Some scientists believe our decisions may also be affected by what we don't yet know - that we have intuitive processes that seems to influence our decision-making from a source as yet immeasurable, almost standing outside of time as we know it.
There are people that use their intuition not just to make decisions, but to make predictions with uncanny accuracy, and exceptional awareness. There are people that get just get "good" or "bad" feelings about some things, and go on gut instinct, to invariably find made the right decision. Often those people have a strong connection to self, because they communicate regularly and trust their inner voice.
This means that it is not only the past that influences us, but we are made up of something more of which we yet don't know that helps us rise above merely being a product of our parents or past, and even our genetics. This is great news, because it means we have the power to change and improve, to wipe the slate clean and script our own future. Where we can nurture ourselves not against our nature, but to rise to our TRUE nature.
That said, I provide you below with a summary of my five secret steps to making better decisions. I use these in my own life, and believe me, it works. Whether you are a person that wants to take the short route to success, or the long route to understanding, these five steps will help you in your life - starting from today.
Five secret steps to making better decisions
- Be aware of our potential for manipulation, and be critically aware of your own decision-making process.
- Don't make decisions based on loss or gain.
- Understand the power of emotions over our decisions. Understand what decisions do to us emotionally (i.e., we buy new shoes to makes us feel good or increase attractiveness), and achieve a balance with rationalisation.
- Don't ignore your intuition. It could give you a decision-making edge.
- Take all four steps above in the spirit of love. It will lessen your chance of manipulation, give you a more empathic perspective when making a decision, rather than based on a selfish one of loss or gain. It will act as a balancer between your logic and emotions and is the live-link to your intuition.
When we delve into the mysteries of our decisions, we peek into the mysteries of own lives - and life itself - and what strikes us most is for all we know, how much we do not know.
We have no answer why love is so important in our lives, or why when we are destructive, we are really only increasing the opportunities for our own destruction. We do not exactly know how the mathematics of the universe add up, or sum us up in the great equation of things. We can only know what works for us, in our small slice of life we have been blessed with.
We do our own sums; we add and subtract factors when we make our decisions, use funny formulaic expressions that might only hold meaning for us, using quirky intuitive processes to make what we feel to be the best decisions. But above all else, if we make a decision with love, we realise that we are no different or better than anyone else. We are part of everyone else.
This means we will all do illogical things - like putting our trust in things we cannot see, because the material goods we can we know will perish. For neither riches, nor worldly fame - nor anything for that matter apart from the energy that gives all living things life - will last. These are just the emperor's new clothes, or soap bubbles that last for a single moment, before they burst, to return to what was before.
Ultimately, this is possibly the main reason why it's so important to decide with love, because when love decides, it does from the inside, from something more lasting than the decision, the moment, or the world itself.
Yours in love,
