If you’ve ever wondered why it’s so hard to make yourself do the things that
you know will solve your problems and improve your life, the answer is simple. It’s
your feelings. None of us realize it, but we make almost every single decision not
with logic, not with our hearts, not based on our goals or dreams—but with our
feelings.
And our feelings in the moment are almost never aligned with what’s best for
us. Take Christine as an example. She knows what’s best for her: to speak up. In the
moment, however, her feelings are making her second-guess herself. Study after
study shows that we opt for what feels good now or feels easier rather than doing
the things that we know in our hearts will make us better in the long run.
The moment that you realize your feelings are the problem, you now have the
ability to beat them. Look at how quickly Christine’s feelings rose in that meeting in
Plano, Texas. In less than five seconds, self-doubt started to fill her mind. It
happens to all of us. And once you understand the role feelings play in how you
make a decision, you will be able to beat them. Here’s what you need to know:
You Make Decisions Based On How You Feel
We like to think that we use logic or consider our goals when we make decisions
but that’s not the case. According to neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, it’s our
feelings that decide for us 95% of the time. You feel before you think. You feel
before you act. As Damasio puts it, human beings are “feeling machines that think”
not “thinking machines that feel.” And that’s how you ultimately make decisions—
based on how you feel.
Damasio studied people who had damage to their brains and couldn’t feel any
emotions at all and he discovered something fascinating—none of his research
subjects could make a decision. They could describe logically what they should do