Skip to content

Better decision making: Head or heart? Will power. Inner voice. Motorway moments.

Head or heart?

Who’s right: People who use their head or their heart? The answer is neither, of course. The best decision-makers combine gut feelings with logical analysis. Sticking to one approach can limit your thinking. So, how can you balance both?

If you typically trust your gut, you’ve probably found that your initial reactions are often correct. This instinct shouldn’t be ignored, but why stop there? Note your first impression, then take a few moments to gather more information. Compare your gut instinct with the conclusions from a more logical approach.

When these conclusions differ, it’s a good thing! Instead of rushing to decide, take a moment to understand where your gut feeling comes from. Daniel Kahneman refers to this as ‘System 1’ thinking, which is logical in its own way. It generates reactions based on partial information available at the moment.

Interestingly, the information from these snap judgments often gets missed in detailed analysis. So, don’t ignore it, rather use it and understand its origin.

If you see yourself as a logical person, that’s great too. But don’t dismiss your instincts. As mentioned, these gut reactions are logical and might capture evidence your conscious mind misses.

Want to make the best decisions? Next time someone asks if you follow your head or your heart, confidently say, “Both!”

Will power?

How do we harness will power for better decision making? We all desire more will power to make decisions that align with our long-term goals rather than succumbing to immediate desires. We also aim to establish new habits until they become second nature.

While the benefits of will power are evident, its nature and mechanics remain somewhat mysterious. Here’s a little of what we know and how you can enhance your will power both immediately and over time:

Neuroscience suggests that will power is not controlled by a single brain area but is connected to the brain’s ‘rich club’, a network of 12 key regions that coordinate overall brain activity. Blood sugar allocation plays a crucial role, but practical strategies are derived from psychological research.

Will power is often likened to a muscle; the more you use it, the stronger it becomes. However, this also means we have a limited reserve of will power that can be quickly depleted if overused.

Therefore, trying to transform your entire life at once is unrealistic. Instead, focus on one change at a time and build gradually. Plan for potential setbacks and create vivid images to remind yourself of the long-term impact of your decisions.

For example, consider this scenario: You think, ‘If I break my leave the office by 6:30 pm rule tonight, I’ll likely make the same choice regularly. Tonight’s decision could mean the difference between establishing a habit of leaving on time and working late 200 nights a year.’

However, with a bit of moral licence, you can allow yourself to think, ‘It’s 6:40 pm, I’ve already broken my rule, so I might as well stay until midnight and get a lot done.’ That way, you’re letting yourself off the hook with an exceptional instance, whilst still hanging on to your established habit.

By understanding and strategically exercising your will power – or ‘flexing’ it, you can make decisions that align with your long-term goals and gradually build habits that lead to lasting success.

Inner voice

Our inner voice is a constant companion, providing a running commentary on everything we do. Often, this commentary can be surprisingly harsh, with thoughts like ,‘Don’t choke’, ‘You’re stupid’, or ‘You’re going to get found out in a minute.’ It’s crucial to understand that this inner voice is not the same as you; it is merely a thought that emerges in your consciousness.

Recognising that your inner voice is just one thought among many can be incredibly empowering. Despite its frequent negativity, this inner voice is usually well-intentioned. It aims to protect you, often by relaying advice that has worked in the past or that minimises risk. Sometimes, it echoes messages we’ve repeatedly heard from parents, teachers, or other authority figures.

However, the well-meaning nature of your inner voice doesn’t necessarily mean its advice is sound. It’s important not to accept it as fact without scrutiny. Acknowledge the thought, but make a conscious decision to disregard it when it isn’t helpful.

So how can you manage your inner voice?

Step One: Awareness. The first step in managing your inner voice is to recognise when it’s leading you down an unhelpful path. This awareness can be challenging in the moment, given how ingrained these thoughts are in our self-perception. More often, you may identify these thoughts in hindsight. Reflect on moments when you experienced a sudden change in emotion or mindset: Why did you lose confidence? Why were you defensive with your boss? Examine these shifts and identify if a negative comment from your inner voice was at the core.

Step Two: Analysis. Once you’ve identified and documented these thoughts, analyse them. Consider where they originated. Did they stem from a particularly harsh teacher or a well-meaning but overly critical parent? While these messages might have been somewhat helpful at the time, are they relevant in your current, more complex adult life?

Identifying the root of these thoughts can help diminish their power. Even if the origin remains unclear, you can still question the validity and helpfulness of your inner voice. Remember, it is just one perspective among many, and you have the power to choose a more constructive mindset.

Step Three: Reframing. The final step is to develop more helpful thoughts or ideas for each situation. Challenge yourself to go against the negative inner voice. Ask why you can’t follow a different, more positive course of action. Some people find it useful to model their inner voice after a supportive person from their past, like a grandparent or an admired early-career boss. You can cultivate a diverse inner support team, each offering constructive advice tailored to different scenarios.

Your inner voice, though often negative and critical, is a part of you that seeks to protect and guide. By recognising it as just one of many thoughts, you can evaluate its relevance and choose whether to accept or ignore its advice. Developing this skill can lead to more confident decision-making and a healthier, more positive mindset. Embrace the process of managing your inner voice, and you’ll find yourself making decisions that are not only better informed but also more aligned with your true self and goals.

Motorway moments

Someone cuts you off on the Motorway. Even if you don’t say it aloud, the word ‘Idiot’ (or similar!) instantly comes to mind.

We tend to assume without thinking that the other driver’s actions are behavioural rather than situational. In other words, they cut us off because it is in their character to do so. We quickly assign a label to them, such as ‘Boy Racer’.

In reality, there’s a good chance they simply don’t know the roads or made a bad decision. If we’re honest, we probably find ourselves in that situation sometimes and do the same.

Whether we think the event is caused by the other person’s character or by circumstances is crucial. If it’s the former, it significantly impacts us. Their ‘lack of respect’ makes us feel worse and can trigger these unhelpful emotions:

I’m going to show them who’s boss. This will restore my self-respect.
or…
Passive-aggressive. The world is full of idiots. I’ll become more cynical to avoid this again.
or…
This always happens to me. I must be worth less than I thought.

These reactions can lead us to risky actions or harmful thoughts for our future selves. However, our response can change if we realise the event was situational, driven by circumstances, not the person’s intention-driven behaviour. We can appreciate their problems and quickly feel that all is well. We can even give ourselves a pat on the back for taking these things in stride.

The interesting thing here is that when faced with a situation like this, aside from the instinctive flash of danger awareness, our short-term emotional state is largely about how we choose to think about the event that has just happened. Further, our self-perception, future behaviours, habits, and even character are shaped by the accumulation of choices like these.

Luckily, we don’t get cut off on the motorway every 5 minutes, but how often do we encounter similar ‘Motorway moments’ during a day at work? Customers’ needs, colleagues’ reactions, waves of emails, a string of unproductive meetings; all of these things offer opportunities to interpret events or comments as either behavioural or situational.

So how do we catch ourselves in the moment and choose the most helpful way to interpret events? Well, 80% of the battle is in the question. If we can recognise a “Motorway moment” when it occurs, we have a decent chance of choosing how to react to it. The problem generally is that we’re too busy paying attention to other things to notice that we’ve had an unhelpful emotional reaction to some small (but significant) event.

Step One is about being primed for this to happen, having a mental label (such as ‘Motorway moment’!) prepared and ready to stick on the event.

Step Two is about paying full attention to what has just happened and the underlying (unhelpful) assumptions you might have made. Once you’ve highlighted these assumptions, you can unpeel them and replay your thinking with new inferences, leaving you without the emotional baggage (and decision interference) the original assumptions generated.

Step Three is to think about that assumption in more general terms and ask yourself, what other situations might this generate unhelpful emotions and thus drive less-than-optimal decisions? How can I rewrite my own assumptions to generate better decisions in the moment from now on?

(With thanks to Pete Freeman at Praesta Partners for allowing me to adapt and re-post his original piece.)

If you’d like to schedule an exploratory call or video meeting to discuss my executive and leadership coaching for first-time CEOs, MDs, and senior executives, please get in touch.