Summary
Brett and Joe explore the mechanics of decision-making, beginning with the neuroscience foundation: the emotional center is the decision-making part of the brain. All decisions are fundamentally emotional — we use intellect to predict how we’ll feel, but those predictions are riddled with assumptions. If a trusted authority told you “just choose this and you’ll be happier,” every pro-con list would go out the window, revealing that we’re always optimizing for feeling, not outcomes.
The episode introduces several practical frameworks. First, whenever you feel stuck in a “decision” (as opposed to a simple “choice”), fear is present — and that fear narrows thinking into binary options. The short-term fix: instead of trying to make the decision, do the next most obvious thing. Investigate the fear, take the next concrete step, and decisions tend to evaporate into choices. Joe illustrates this with his philanthropy investing experience, where big investment decisions dissolved into a series of obvious next steps.
The deeper framework is principled decision-making: identify a small set of principles you live by (e.g., “I don’t work with assholes,” “connection comes first”) and let those principles make most decisions for you. This approach collapses decision-making time, keeps you in yourself during stressful moments, and — treated as a portfolio — produces better outcomes over many decisions than optimizing each one individually. The episode also explores how avoiding feared emotions creates confirmation bias, invites the very outcomes we fear, and why good decision-making requires surrender of outcomes.
Key Concepts
- Do the next most obvious thing instead of deciding
- Good decisions feel right now, not in the imagined future
- Principles make decisions for you
- Avoidance of fear invites the feared outcome
- Surrender outcomes to decide clearly
- Confirmation bias protects us from emotions we won’t feel
Key Quotes
“If you’re happy to feel any emotion good or bad, if you welcome any of these emotions, your decision making becomes very clear.”
“If you think you’re making a decision, you’re in fear. Period.”
“Instead of trying to get the best outcome or get the right outcome, I’m gonna change my focus to how does it feel best in me.”
“If a principle doesn’t help me make decisions, it’s not a true principle.”
“The things that we fear, we invite through the avoidance of the things that we fear.”
“Since we can’t control the outcome, there is a place where that has to be surrendered. And learning that surrender creates so much freedom and so much joy.”
Transcript
foreign [Music] accomplishment where we explore how deepening connection with ourselves and others leads to creating the life we want with enjoyment and ease I’m Brett Kistler here today with my co-host Joe Hudson Hey Joe how you doing I’m good man how are you yeah doing well you know I’ve been thinking that you know on the podcast a number of times I think I’ve mentioned how we first met which was that you had been doing a talk in San Francisco called how to make good business decisions and yeah that was something that really caught my eye I had ended up moving to the Bay Area from kind of my life overseas doing Air Sports and base jumping and Wing suiting and I was on my own personal mission of how to make better decisions because there’d been a lot of cost and consequence with not making great decisions in our community and I really wanted that to be that was a study that I was really deeply in at the time driving me down rabbit holes and Neuroscience and Consciousness in general yeah and so I just realized we’ve never actually done an episode on how to make decisions yeah all right well that tickles me to no end that’s actually something I was thinking about when you set out about decision making what made me crack up at the beginning was this this idea of like oh we really haven’t done this and it’s such a integral part of the work so yeah I look forward to let’s do it let’s talk about decision making it’s also one of the Practical things that people desire you know we talk a lot about how to feel your feelings and people are like okay great what’s the point yeah okay yeah good then we should tie those two things in together let’s do that yeah so as we’ve we’ve talked about the thing many times on the podcast about how the emotional Center is the decision-making part of our brain that if we remove it it’ll take us a half an hour to decide what color pen you know or whatever it is like you might you’ll maintain your intelligence but you won’t be able to make any decisions so that’s the that’s the quintessential link the quintessential link is that we make emotional decisions we do not make intellectual decisions what we’re doing is we’re using the intellect to help us try to understand how we will feel at the end of the decision so we use a SWOT analysis to it’s not really like what’s the best result it’s what how will we feel at the end of it and I think I’ve said this on the podcast too before which is like if you took your SWOT analysis and some Authority that you completely trusted looked at you and said you know if you just choose this you’ll be happier or if you just choose this you’ll have a more satisfied life the SWOT analysis just goes out the window and so yeah and for for listeners who might not know what a SWOT analysis is it’s a term used in like business that is strengths weaknesses opportunities threats yeah or like if you’ve written a pro and con list to decide what you know whether you’re going to marry the person or whether you’re gonna you know take the job whatever yeah Darwin had a very very famous one of those on how whether he should marry the person or not marry the person wait tell me this story to say it again yeah I guess I guess uh the Charles Darwin famously did that he did like a very intellectual bullet point pros and cons list about whether or not to marry his wife right right yeah right and and if somebody would have said to Charles like hey Charles man guarantee you’re gonna have a happier better life if you marry her than if you don’t it’s just like all that whole analysis just throws goes out the window and so that’s that’s the the other clue that what we’re really doing is we’re just using the intellect to try to figure out how we’ll feel best and in that there’s an assumption like I’ll feel better if my wife is supportive I’ll feel better if the job makes me money I will feel better if I am successful I will feel better and so so not only are we trying to figure out what’s going to make us feel the best or the way that we think we want to feel but in that is a whole bunch of assumptions that are often full of errors so the intellect can also lead us into the wrong place whereas the emotional experiences is a great way if you’re really aware of your emotions and you understand how they move then decision making becomes something like a completely different thing than to think that you’re making intellectual decisions when you’re not ever making yeah yeah yeah something tying back to another thing that you’ve said I don’t know if it’s on this podcast but you told me once that I really like this which was that the the body lies as much as the mind yes or you could say even the emotions do yeah and so this isn’t necessarily to say that our emotions are correct and our mind is wrong it’s more just to say that we make decisions based on the emotions that we anticipate we’re going to feel based on the outcomes yeah so that knowledge helps us just helps us be more aware of the full stack of what we’re making decisions from not necessarily to point to any particular part of our system as being more trustworthy than another part correct yes is that accurate yeah I would I would say there’s a couple things in that the first one is Clarity and decision making comes from being willing and able and welcoming all emotional experiences so what we know about Neuroscience is that we’re more likely to make a decision or act as a way to avoid something bad that do feel something good so a lot of the times what that means is that our decision making the intellect is weighing the avoidance of something bad over the potential of feeling if you’re happy to feel any emotion good or bad if you welcome any of these emotions your decision making becomes very clear if you can be in love with feeling fear if you can be in love with feeling anger if you can be in love with feeling excitement or exalted or exuberant which everybody’s like of course I can but notice that you might that might not be the case so if you can feel all those things happily and you look forward to them then your decision making gets a lot more clear so that that’s part of it the second part of it is that yes your emotional system is not always clear in itself in the fact that you might be say feeling something because of a trauma that isn’t actually happening in this moment or your mind might be telling you a certain emotion means something that it doesn’t mean right and then a great example of this is uh anxiety and excitement that oftentimes I mean there’s this great phrase that excitement is just fear with breath or anxiety is excitement without the breath basically that if you can breathe into a feeling of anxiety or fear that it can become excitement very very quickly and and so that like what’s the what’s the right emotional experience there is it just is it that you’re not breathing is it that you’re actually feeling excitement or fear so there can be a lot of confusion around that as well and so yes it’s not like listen to your body and you’ll make all these great decisions it’s literally understanding how your emotions work how your body works how your intellect works in the decision-making process is uh is the beginning of Learning to make great yeah and it sounds like that also includes being aware of what our fears really are you know an example and jumping would be you might have the healthy fear that it points to the physical risk you’re about to take yeah and you might also be feeling the fear of letting somebody down or the fear of not you know some kind of threat to your identity and you might be registering that identity threat as a physical threat and feel physical the physical response of fear yes and not realize that you’re weighting your decision towards something that is actually protecting an identity rather than protecting your life and that’s that’s one of the core learnings from from this work for me and back propagating through my through my life in Air Sports yeah right that’s so a lot of us are protecting our identity and yeah that’s beautiful and and a lot of us make Bad Business decisions and apparently bad jumping decisions in Air Sports based on something that’s actually not dangerous to us but dangerous too our identity yeah I would say the thing is is that the if you think you’re making a decision you’re in fear period so I have made 500 choices today I am unaware of those choices they just happened right so I I’m choosing to talk to you right now I’m choosing to have my phone and or my computer in this configuration I’m choosing where to look I’m choosing what I’m drinking I’m choosing what words to say and they’re all choice so for semantics I’m going to call those choices decisions is where you go okay I have a decision to make and now I’m sitting here thinking about do I go left or do I go right do I do I take the job do I not take the job do I buy the car do I not buy the car so if you’re in a thing where a decision where a choice has become a decision where all of a sudden there’s a lot of thought put into it and you’re really putting some energy into Matt in itself is is fear so already you’re in some fear operating in some fear I kind of want to challenge that a little bit as a devil’s advocate what makes it not that we could be operating out of Desire on the one side of the coin I can see that we fear a negative outcome on the other side of the coin I can see that we desire the best of possible outcomes and what we might even desire to not have the thing that we fear occur and it can like which which how do we know whether fear or desire is actually primary there and can it be both it can be both but but all that I’m saying is that fear is involved that there’s there’s some place where there’s fear involved so there could be a ton of motivations desire being one of them or the motivation to be right or the motivation to not be judged or there’s a thousand motivations in there um but there’s a fear there’s a fear of getting it wrong there’s a fear of a consequence if you’re making a decision instead of just having a choice that is in front of you and so and so that’s a really important thing is just to notice that there’s fear involved in it and when there is fear involved in it our ability to think becomes less clear our ability to learn becomes um dwindled our ability to see more solutions right because we become more binary in our thinking so all of that occurs because we’re in fear so once we’re in that decision making that’s what happens and it’s kind of the short fix on that that I that a lot of people will use and that I I will share here is that uh you just do the next most obvious thing so I’ll give you a story about this so when I was investing in I would call I called it Investing For philanthropy where we would um you know put Millions hundreds of thousands millions of dollars into some project there’s this thing about like is this there’s this moment are you going to do it are you going to put this money in and I used to think that when I saw that I used to think oh that’s a decision that I have to make and I have to make it well and through my time working in philanthropy what I realized was that’s a false that’s not true it’s never true what’s true is you just do the next most obvious thing oh if I’m if I’m thinking do I put the money in or do I not put the money that means there’s some fear what’s the fear that I have to address okay I don’t know if this person is going to be great okay I’ll do some reference checks okay now do I still is it just am I sending them money now or am I still trying to make a decision oh I’m still trying to make a decision okay well maybe it’s not what’s happening oh maybe they’re not serving okay the next most obvious step is to call some of the people they’re serving and make sure that their product is as good or their services as good as I thought it was oh you know so it was just a constantly looking anytime I thought I had to make a decision what’s the next most obvious step what’s the fear that’s not being addressed here and what’s the next most obvious step that’ll lead me to so what if one of the next most obvious step is shit it I’ll just jump that’ll make the decision for me or the next obvious step is I’m just gonna go to the fridge and grab another beer or yeah what makes the next most obvious step I guess this would be a matter of how well we’ve calibrated our emotions and where they direct us how like how much we’ve felt but I’m also curious how you would distinguish yeah that’s a great obvious choices yeah that’s that’s awesome very specifically it means that you’re staying focused on the problem and you’re not jumping in the mode you’re not speed bumping an emotional experience so so what that means is that it’s not like oh the next most obvious step is to ignore or to to uh to avoid and the next most obvious step isn’t to avoid Again by jumping over an experience I’m just so tired of being in this not knowing that I’m gonna shit just do something that’s a one’s level of avoidance and the other level of avoidance is I’m gonna go grab a beer and so what you’re doing is you’re staying focused on it and you’re not speed bumping any of the emotional experiences and how do you how do you prevent getting into like analysis paralysis there if the next most obvious choice is to check the check the charts and then go back and check some other numbers and then go back and check your yeah so I’ve the next most obvious thing to do and so and if you’re looping okay if you if if you’re looping then you’re not doing the next most obvious thing to do right so looping is like checking the charts I would say isn’t doing what’s the thing that you have to do what’s the next most obviously to do and that’s the the critical piece yeah yeah those are great those are great nuances that you’re pulling out yeah cool so that that’s like that’s a that I would say that’s a short term but there’s a great really practical I’m in a decision here’s what I do I every time and it’s literally oh I think I have to make a decision that means I’m in fear that means there’s something that I need to investigate what is it that I have to do next and it’s that it’s that it’s that analysis of okay I see it now that means that there’s something here what do I have to do to investigate to unravel that and what would the difference be between like the next most obvious thing might be to take actions and follow the next most obvious actions and it might be the next most obvious thing to do is to pause and do a little bit of yoga or take care of yourself sure and sure you know what would make you not get kind of pulled in I guess if you were to do that and you you get regulated to a point it’ll naturally arise on you to start taking action on the problem again yes yeah I mean I’m not saying that you have to like 24 7 the problem but yeah it’s just like what’s the next step in the problem if you need to take care of yourself in the meantime obviously yeah and I think that the the thing that I mean it’s kind of this amazing thing just if you this is like a simple little experiment you can do which is super fun so you’re driving and you’re like where are we gonna eat and that that’s a dis and it’s like all of a sudden you’re in the conversation with your girlfriend fiance kids whatever where are we gonna eat and there’s this whole thing or you’re in it with yourself and then if you just say you know what I’m not gonna I’m just gonna find out where I’m gonna end up and then all of a sudden you’re at this place you like then you have a conversation and then boom oh right all of a sudden we’re here oftentimes that’s the way life Works where you can literally just say oh that I think I have to make this decision and I can just actually kind of look and find out and that’s what used to happen with the philanthropy is just like I would just say oh what’s the next most obvious thing and then all of a sudden I’m like yeah we should investor no I’m out of here and it wasn’t and that decision never felt like it got made right it was never like oh wow I have made the decision I’m doing this or I’m not doing this I just looked up and was like I guess I didn’t invest there or I guess I did and and that’s that’s how the world works it’s like all of a sudden these big decision points just kind of evaporate and they just become the next most obvious thing and so and and and it’s because you’re addressing the fear directly instead of instead of thinking that you can figure out the future by sitting and looking at charts or thinking it through okay so so we’ve talked a little bit about how emotions are a big part of how we’re making decisions and that they are generally fear driven and when we when we feel like we’re in a decision there’s some kind of fear um another way that that relates to you know something that I’ve experienced is that any anytime that I find myself stressed in a decision it also just means that I haven’t fully accepted the outcomes of all the options or of the options that I might take yeah um which is a different way of saying what you’re saying I think no there’s what you’re saying there is like another Nuance that’s really important which is so what how most people think making a good decision so most people think oh okay here’s a good decision um it’s a decision where I avoided the consequences I made the decision that I avoided the consequences and I got the reaction that I wanted to get that I got the thing that I wanted to get so a good decision in a business or an investment is that the investment um went well right but my experience as a venture capitalist was that my best investment was the one that I made like not so good money in and the worst investment was where I made the most money and and and I think I can’t tell you how many VCS have felt that same way where they have like this was a great investment but it didn’t make money and this was this was like God it was a shit show but it made a ton of money and you’re speaking to some other like intangible return than money that came from it yeah or like I mean the company was really well run and it was like they had a good team and and for whatever reason something or this cut or this or it did something really cool in the world but that market timing was off right and whereas the other um so saving a lot of money but yeah but it was all fakata and 17 other ways and it caused the biggest headaches and took the most of my time etc etc gotta yeah so you’re referring to a decision that based on the available information was a good decision it just didn’t work out and other ones that yes you just happen to invest in and if you had been if you had your druthers you wouldn’t have done so and then it worked out because there’s some there’s some especially in the markets and with companies and investing there’s a lot of stochasticity and then a lot of decision making then becomes about you know portfolio Theory and an example of that from from like jumping would be you could say that you made a good decision because you survived the jump you just did and you could also survive a jump and say that was I made a bunch of terrible decisions because I don’t believe that I could have done that a hundred times and survive that and if I had planned on making 100 jumps then that was a failure that’s exactly right that’s exactly right yeah if I if I made the kind of decision that I made with the company that didn’t do so well 10 times my portfolio would be freaking amazing if I did 10 to 10 decisions with the one that did well 10 times I would be bankrupt that’s exactly the way to say it yeah yeah beautifully said yeah yeah very cool yeah so so so but one way people think about it when they’re like I have to make a good decision most people are thinking is it going to get me the result that I want is the decision I’m going to make get the result out that I want and that’s not how I make it that’s not how I see good decision making and it’s not I don’t think it it also doesn’t lead to the best decisions overall it doesn’t lead to the best outcomes overall either so what I would suggest is that when you’re looking at how to make a good decision the other way is to look at what a good decision is is that feels really good inside of you you’re like oh this like I could be happy with the consequences either way because I made a decision in a way that felt great it felt like it was a part of my authenticity it felt like who I am like so when people are going do I take the job or do I not take the job they’re thinking which one’s going to make me happy instead of oh what’s the decision that makes me feel really good right now right it makes me feel like oh how do I make this decision right and because we’re in fear we’re thinking about it in a binary way and so we’re not seeing all the Alternatives and as soon as you say to yourself okay instead of trying to get the best outcome or get the right outcome I’m gonna change my focus to to how does it feel best in me then immediately the fear starts evaporating new options get seen so it’s not I’m going to take the job or not take the job it becomes I’m going to ask for this and this and this or I’m going to make sure that my relationship with this person is right before I take the job or I’m going to make sure that the resources that I need to be great at this job are going to be delivered for me before I take the job and so the the change goes how do I how do I be in this decision that feels great right now is another way that I think a more fruitful way to think about how to make great decisions it’s not the outcome it’s how you are in the decision making process yeah I’m seeing a really beautiful symmetry right now back to the relationships how relationships reveal Us episode where we you described that if we’re in a relationship where our role is to make the other one happier than we’re both basically that’s hell and I’m seeing that right here it’s like if we’re making decisions out of the trying to make ourselves our future selves happy like you can’t predict yeah yeah yeah that’s great yeah and then the the other way I the way I think I’m making a great decision is if I’m making it principally and and so I think principal decisions are super critical and and so there’s two reasons for them one is that if you’re making a decision principally you’re more likely to get the reality that you are are wanting but the other reason is because you make decisions a lot quicker all of a sudden decisions just evaporate and they just become choices so for instance and I can give you lots of stories about this but I’ll just give you one principle that I work off of which is I just don’t work with assholes like I just don’t do and and there’s been huge times where there’s been like large amounts of money that I could have made if I would have just suffered this this asshole first you know X period of time or something like that and it was really hard to say no to this big pile of money and at the same time I have that principle and I and I know that living by these principles and I’ll revisit them every once I’ll say is this true is this still right on the principles that I live by but if I live by those principles then it turns out that like my life is the life that I want it to be and all my choices can help me and so I don’t even think of a principle as something if a principle doesn’t help me make decisions it’s not a it’s not true principle what’s another example another example is that I put connection first right so if I have a decision to make over like do I accept something or not accept something in my life or a job offer or a client or I connect I will not make the decision unless I feel a sense of connection and then I can like oh that’s the connection is first and if I’m having a problem first thing I do is I go and connect with the person that’s a principle that I I live by and so what does that do in the long term what that does is if I make enough decisions that way it ends up that I don’t I don’t have assholes around me which is fantastic and I feel deeply connected with the people around me which is fantastic and so the principles that you hold if you hold them through all decisions because the decisions is one event and so you can think about your decision like a portfolio too yeah and it’s like oh I have a portfolio of decisions and my job is to make most of them good decisions and if I’m living principally I will do that and it might be hard in those moments but and but finding those principles and living by them making your decisions by them is the shortcut yeah this ties back to what you said about feeling great about making the decision or making the decision that feels great in your system now and yes I imagine if you if you make decisions from what you think your future feeling is going to be then you’re basically telling yourself that I am prioritizing my imaginary fantasy future over my present so you’re going to end up living a life where you’re present is always organized to be sacrificed for some future uh so beautifully seen that’s exactly right yeah yeah beautifully seen because I’ve been there that’s yeah we all have right we all have and I remember this you know I remember this time when like people talked about principal decision making and I just was like what the fuck are you talking about you know like like what do you mean and and it just made no sense to me it was just I remember it was like and then what happened was I was working with somebody who worked exclusively on principle decision making and it was over this deal it was like early in my Venture Capital career excuse me I’m it was and he’s making a decision and he basically just went through like these five principles you know this this this this this this this and and it was a board thing and he just like said these are the principles and he let and I saw him do it I saw him make a great decision really really quickly and I saw him not lose his Centre in the in the process you know like it was you know one of these things where you get the board call and everybody’s freaking out because something bad’s happening and this was like a merger an acquisition like like our big exit was about to go away and it was horrible and everybody’s freaking out what do we do to like and this guy’s just like yeah so here are my principles on this and I remember one of the principles where it was you build a company to make the best company you don’t build a company to sell it that’s one of the principles that he lived by so he’s just like if they don’t want to buy the company we don’t we don’t chase if we chase the best case scenario we get a lower price if we’re like fine best case scenarios they go oh shit and they come back great but in the meantime we’re just going to continue to build the best company we can build and it was just principally decided bam one they had like five principles and he went through all of them this these are my principles this is what I see works and he just did it and he never lost himself and it was absolutely the right decision for the company we made a lot more money on that company and and that and finally the the when they came back to buy it was that same company that came back to buy us and paid a lot more money a year later and so so it was just that it was that and when I saw that I was like oh that’s what that’s what people are talking about when they say principal decisions it means I am going to do something that feels like shit right now for as far as my ego goes as far as my identity goes as far as like short-term gain goes because I I know these principles work and so I’m going to live by these principles and they worked yeah yeah there’s an interesting they didn’t work I don’t think it would have mattered to him at all except for maybe he would have looked long-term oh are my principles wrong right yeah there’s an interesting contrast there to like the I guess if there’s a principle of I’m going to make the decision that feels good that might conflict sometimes with the principles that actually draw us through our ego you know through through the uncomfortable feelings of you know drawing boundaries and saying no and leaving money on the table and you know firing somebody that we like as a person and all these all these decisions that can bring us through difficult feelings yeah and so how like I guess there’s a there’s a lot of times our emotions might conflict with our principles and our emotions might conflict with our intellectual analysis but it sounds like the difference between the intellectual analysis and the principles is that the principles are something that’s been sort of Consolidated over time and you’ve learned that it works and you know it might be like I you know what I don’t lie I don’t want to tell lies because I don’t want to have to remember 30 different truths for who I’m talking to right you know yeah yeah yeah the distinction here that’s I think really important to make is like there’s men like I I think about like Mandela working and like breaking stones in the Quarry and being in in jailed for a long period of time that wasn’t going to be comfortable but it felt good there’s some aspect of him that felt true to himself that felt like he was being himself in that process and so the good that I’m feeling that I’m speaking to like you feel good in the decision means that you’re in yourself you’re you’re empowered you’re saying yes this is who I am not in an identification way but in a way of like presence I can be present in this decision making I’m not saying I’m going to be comfortable okay I’m sure he was not comfortable but I’m sure that he could be himself in that and so that’s the distinction that I’m making yeah and then being able to welcome all your emotional states is to say oh I can feel I can happily Feel the fear of losing this deal I can happily feel the anguish of being stuck in this Quarry I can happily feel any of these experiences allows you to be in yourself and maintain Who You Are in rough times and who you are is the principles yeah as far as like how you want to be in the world I want to tie this back to another thing maybe this is even just a principle or just a sort of a pillar of the work which is that we tend to invite what we fear and so if we’re acting on principles that bring us into our fear how to how do we how do we follow those principles into fearful places without inviting the thing we fear like for example if my if I have a principle that leads me to uh want to approach a bunch of investors or approach some people I’m attracted to at a bar and I also know that that’s going to bring me into a situation that I’m afraid of and then maybe I will stumble over my words and then like produce some kind of negative response to my expectation get rejection and that I I might be able to predict that that rejection is going to send me into an emotional spiral for several weeks uh how do we how do we follow principles into the fear without creating the conditions that the fear invites yeah so it’s a it it’s the same principle but it works just a tweak different than how you’re describing it so we the things that we fear we invite through the avoidance of the things that we fear ah so so I’ll give you a story of my I was just having this conversation with my daughter uh last night for dinner and she was she has a new guy that she’s dating and she’s really liking him and she speaks to his like last girlfriend or fling or something like that and she gets this fear that he’s like playing her or like isn’t into her as much as she’s into him or some version of that and so she decides and very cool he decides to say like hey this is the thing that like I have this fear and like what what are you up to and what’s going on here and the guy’s like no I totally want you to be my girlfriend and like I’m totally committed and blah blah blah and so it worked out well for her but in the conversation as she’s talking about it I noticed she was just kind of defending him a little bit too much and like and I said like hey babe what what are you doing like why are you why do you need to defend him why do you need to like justify that he’s not gonna hurt you or something like that what’s really going on there and she sat with it for a minute then she started crying and she was just like this is my own fear this is me being scared that I’m gonna get hurt and I’m trying to avoid getting hurt wow and she says she’s tearing up it was so beautiful and and then and so I said yeah so I want to teach you something in this particular case it worked out well but the reality is is that acting on that fear made it more likely that he was going to abandon you right because you’re more likely to come off needy and she is broken up with a lot of guys who are needy so she knows that world right and so you’re more likely to come off needy which means somebody who’s self-possessed isn’t going to be attracted to you and you also ended up pushing potentially could have pushed him into something that he wasn’t ready for and the other thing is that like if you can take or leave him if you can be in that fear yourself and you know learn to welcome it then you’re self-possessed and that’s a harder person to leave right so all in all those ways so for her it’s the avoidance of that emotional experience that is create is recreating the fear yeah and so what living principally does is it says I’m going to go right towards that emotional experience I’m not going to avoid it right and so we so I I just to give a couple more examples of this I as a kid was like not kid in my 20s I was really scared of being abandoned and so I think we’ve talked about this on the podcast a couple times So to avoid the experience of being abandoned I would get angry at people which would make it more likely for me to be abandoned or I would um become avoidant which made it more likely for me to be abandoned and so it is really us trying not to feel the emotion the thing that we fear abandonment being left being rejected being a loser failing at our business it’s that experience that we are trying to avoid that we’re inviting back in and living principally forces us to feel the stuff that we don’t want to feel fear feel feel the idea that oh this company that is not going to get bought we’re going to lose our investment we have to go and feel that shit and welcome it yeah yeah I love the avoidance of that that makes us run towards them and say oh come on please please sign the deal we’ll give you a discount right and it’s also what makes us justify pre-justify our decisions and post-justify them with confirmation bias one of the things I really love about the story with your daughter is that there was this hurt that she was afraid to feel and so the way that she made the decision she justified in her mind she was justifying her partner yes to avoid feeling that feeling and that’s that created the blind spot that would have had her fall right into that feeling later on and this is just another really key thing about human decision making is that the confirmation bias once we make a decision because we don’t want to feel whatever consequence of having made the wrong decision or having the emotional experience that we were trying to avoid losing the money losing the partner losing the business then we that’s the source of the fear that ends up constructing stories that blind us to reality yeah and then feeling the underlying emotions just the way through it we don’t need to construct a story anymore if we’re okay with right follow the feelings right and that’s the other way in which we create our own we recreate the reality that we assume to be true like or invite the fear so one way is we try to avoid the feeling in a way that immediately brings it towards us another way is that we see the world we prove that this is the way the world is and that recreates that experience for us as well yeah right like the person who’s like who thinks a world leader who thinks uh the world is Cutthroat and everybody’s out to get me and they’re going to get me at some point those are the leaders who go and start the wars who verify that everybody’s out to get them you know they they start penalizing punishing containing constraining oppressing people so that they’re not destroyed and in that they create a world where that is the actual reality and they always get destroyed by it yeah I mean it’d be nice if there were some examples of that on the world stage right now but I mean only if there was examples only yeah maybe like two huge examples are happening one is is currently happening when it will happen in the next five years is that it’s just how that works you know and so these this is the way we do it and so if you live principally if you say okay this is the reality that I want to see and this is how I want to live so that I feel really great about myself then you create that reality and and to do that it forces you to feel all these emotional experiences that you don’t want to feel and become friends with them welcome them you can’t make that decision to say we’re not going to sell the company even though it was going to be a lot of money unless you’re willing to feel yeah the oh shitness of it the fear of it yeah which brings up another potential prison uh principle which could be that I want to make the decision that leads to my deepest growth which you know you don’t necessarily know what that is but you do know what you’re avoiding if you’re if like the more self-aware you become you notice more yeah what it is that you’re avoiding and sometimes I I can tell that I’ve I’ve definitely made decisions in the past that didn’t seem rational I didn’t end up getting what I wanted I didn’t end up feeling the way that I wanted to feel and it’s almost as if there was something subconscious something deep in me that brought me into that place to feel the thing that I was avoiding and I said I couldn’t tell if it was me that knew that or if it was just some deep biological instinct to growth as as a coach who’s been through a lot of this stuff I see that all the time I watch people and they think they’re doing one thing but I’m like nope yeah I totally see how they are like I have a client right now who like isn’t working for a short period of time you know finish one big project and and typically really high-powered people when they stop working they’ll go into like this depression and it’s really just exhaustion and except for their they beat themselves up over not doing anything so they so becomes a depression and and I’m watching her do all this recovery I’m watching her do um making all this growth with her family I’m watching her like be with herself and be more honest with herself and she just is like yeah no I what am I doing I really should go get a job and I’m like like watching her whole doing all the the groundwork to to make the life that she’s always wanted that she’s been avoiding and I so I see that all the time I see people constantly make a series of decisions I’ll know when clients are like gonna make a move usually like a good month or two before because I see that they’re doing these things that they can’t understand but their their deep wisdom is leading them right to it and and I think it’s something so beautiful when you can actually have faith in that when you can say I don’t understand this decision but I have faith that something my wisdom is is is is is guiding me here yeah that leads to a lot less stress over the second guessing of ourselves yeah you know yeah and also I think the other part of good decision making is there is an act of surrender in it there is like an act of surrender to decision like you since we can’t control the outcome there is a a place where that has to be surrendered the outcome has to be surrendered and and there is and learning that surrender is unbelievably like it creates so much freedom and so much joy to say oh this this part of it’s beyond me this is what I can actually control what I can actually control is how I’m going to show up here in my how I’m going to be in the world yeah well that sounds like a wrap I don’t know about you but that feels really good to me yeah sounds good I think we have more to talk about decision making at some point but I think that this is a good one to end with yeah yeah thank you Joe yeah I loved it yeah what a pleasure thank you thanks for bringing up this topic yeah you got it yeah see you everybody bye thanks for listening to the art of accomplishment if you enjoyed what you heard today please subscribe and rate US on your 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