In an age when we pride ourselves on making rational, well thought-out decisions, maybe we should trust our gut more often. If we dwell too much on issues, we lose the clarity that our emotions offer when presented with a decision.
Studies have shown that quick decisions are usually smarter than those given a lot of thought. Jonah Lehrer, author of “How We Decide”, says these decisions are smarter especially when we have built up expertise to drawn upon. In other words, our emotional decisions are trustworthy when we have a history of knowledgeable and successful decisions in that area.
In a 2009 article by Live Science, Northwestern University researchers showed that people were better of recalling details in an experiment when they were distracted, rather than when they paid full attention, leading us to believe that our implicit memories can be quite powerful.
Sometimes our rational minds are not as astute as our instincts and bodily responses can be to stimuli. An experiment conducted by scientists at the University of Iowa had participants play a card game where half of the decks were rigged. It took about 50 cards for subjects to begin to favor the unrigged decks, and about 80 cards before they could explain why. Sensors had been attached to the subjects’ skin and these sensors showed that just after 10 cards, a subject’s skin began to sweat. In short, our bodies and unconscious emotions notice things long before our conscious selves do (experiencelife.com).
These unconscious thoughts and feelings can be incredibly powerful when it comes to pursuing our long-term goals. In a Canadian study conducted by the University of Alberta, researchers demonstrated that our unconscious feelings about objects around us can influence our long-term goals. How we feel about things determines how we pursue our goals. Our unconscious thoughts notice and positively respond to objects or other triggers in the world around us that support our goals.
In other words, our unconscious wants us to succeed. It’s up to us to listen to our instincts. In the words of one Zen saying, “In your heart, you already know.”
John Bradley Jackson
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