Joe cites neuroscientist Antonio Damasio’s Descartes’ Error (2012 edition) showing that people who lose the emotional center of their brain can’t make decisions at all — it takes them half an hour to choose a pen color, four hours to pick a restaurant — despite retaining full IQ. Their businesses collapse, marriages fall apart.
This reveals that what we call “rational decisions” are always emotional decisions. The intellect figures out how to reach an end, but the end itself is always emotional: feeling loved, being seen, avoiding rejection, not feeling like a failure. Huge swaths of our decision-making are visibly emotional once we look.
“If I took the emotional center of your brain out you would cease to make decisions. It would take you a half an hour to decide what color pen to use.”
Clarity doesn’t come from being more logical — it comes from being okay with whatever emotional state arises. When you welcome all emotions equally, decision-making becomes incredibly clear.
Related Concepts
- Emotions are the glue holding beliefs in place
- Indecision means there are unfelt emotions
- Binary thinking signals fear
- Willingness to feel any emotion is the key to clear decision-making
- Every decision is an attempt to avoid an emotion
- Decisions are made in the emotional center of the brain, not through analysis
- If you think you’re making a decision, you’re in fear