Intuition over Reason
Today, I just want to rid myself of this obstinate need to pour out my indecision as regards what leads to indecision! So I write to you all.
Almost all of us have struggled with too many options when it comes to our career, life partner, which university or course to apply to, etc. You might face struggle with choosing a particular city to live in when you don’t feel your liveliest self where you already live and deep down, you feel the guilt in moving out since the area’s got tons of children that your kids can play round the clock with.
It’s during those crippling moments of indecision that we turn to the eternal, ever-prevailing dilemma of intuition vs logic aka heart vs mind. The heart might know what is good for you. It might know where you truly belong and what thing, place or career brings your dormant soul alive but there’s just something utterly mysterious that tends to hold you back from going for what you ‘feel’ is right. So instead of making a choice, whether right or wrong, you just stay there, completely inactive and still.
So what exactly is it that’s keeping us chained to this abyss of indecision that goes deeper and deeper as more and more thought is invested into the subject matter?
To our surprise, the culprit finds its refuge in logic or what is known as rationality. While logic is acutely important and we, as a society, have been taught since the day we popped out of our mothers to be more and more logical, to take our time and think twice before acting, this is especially true when we are supposed to ponder over life-transforming choices.
But as we usually wonder, is it always right to think logically? Can’t we once go for what the heart says and just jump into the most seemingly appealing choice without worrying about whether it will turn out to be the right one or not?
Before we try and clarify this once and for all, without further ado, I would love to fill you in on why this happens in the first place and what lies behind this indecision that just feels like a harbinger of an impending doom.
Reasons are many and sometimes idiosyncratic to each individual and the situation they are in. However, let’s begin by listing a few common ones:
- Too many options: I just want to get a fact out of my system. Human beings tend to do worse with options. Yes. You read that right. Having a lot of options isn’t always something to be over the moon about because we now own more power over each one and can dispose of one to hop onto another without losing much. There’s a thing like too many options and it surfaces when all of them seem utterly similar to you or when you aren’t ready to lose one thing to gain another, cause you just want it all.
To remedy this, perhaps you can try placing a cap on the number of options you have on your plate.
Try the following affirmations:
“ I decide not to consider more than 3 career choices because they are more important to me than the remaining, useless ones.”
“ I only want a city that has a relatively cheaper cost of living and that has enough kids around the area to keep my kids company. I will let go of the need to move to an expensive, posh area just to keep up with the Joneses.”
While cutting your list short, you will realize you have eliminated the trivial, insignificant options and you now have in front of you what truly matters.
2. Perfectionism: Perfectionism might be one of the reasons why you’re suffering from analysis paralysis. Analysis Paralysis is a condition which overtakes your mind when your feet are so deep in the mud of indecision that it becomes almost impossible for you to get out of it given a myriad of seemingly similar options.
Do you feel the need to always have it all from your particular choice? Do you think over a hundred times before finally posting that picture on Instagram just because it has a relatively less vivid backdrop than does the other picture? But the other picture has your eyes closed.
Do you feel you want to become a writer because it satisfies your famished soul but can’t because it pays less? But you aren’t ready to go for engineering or academia that pays well because you are hungry for passion and contentment. Furthermore, you can’t settle for either writing or engineering because that’s not what your family and friends are into and as a result, you fear you would become a misfit.
So what do you want to do?
If this sounds like you, you might be a perfectionist. Let me remind you of something:
Letting go of perfectionism doesn’t mean you’re settling for average. It just means you’re making a decision that is ‘good enough’ initially and you’re pouring your heart and soul into it to make it close to perfect. Choosing a good enough goal, going for it regardless and working your ass off is the road to success in any endeavor.
3. Anxiety-induced overthinking: Anxious people tend to think more than a common, calmer fellow. They possess the tendency to take scrupulous note of every angle of a thing or a situation until it paralyses their thinking and they can’t move forward because every thing or situation seems to have countless pros and cons.
This, however, can be remedied. Work on your anxiety, take good care of your health by incorporating Mediterranean food in your diet and exercise regularly. Since this can’t be achieved in a day, make sure you point out to yourself when you’re overthinking a situation and be acutely aware of the fact that you’re just overthinking and the situation might not be as bad as your anxiety has made it seem.
4. Environmental reasons: Certain external factors like what the society expects of you, what your friends are doing in life, where they are doing it and how your parents raised you to make your thinking shape into what it turned out to be today, all go into making decisions, big and small.
Again, being aware and following your intuition might help with the issue.
Because an excessively rational mind that relies too heavily on logic is a servant to external situations and is always susceptible to analysis paralysis. It will give you ten different logically-sound reasons why to pursue a choice and why not to pursue it but only a few as to why you should give it your all and let go of everything else.
Intuition, on the other hand, is a product of years of experience and the resultant mental fortitude to make quick decisions. It is defined by the Google dictionary as the ability to understand something instinctively, without the need for conscious reasoning. It is the ‘feeling’ side of our minds but can be more reliable when ten options seem equally good enough to us and our heart i.e., the collected experience and judgement, is cognizant of the overriding one of them all.
You are the sole owner of this entire repository of experiences and past judgments and you go out looking for innumerable reasons behind everything?
Make use of this sacred gift that you have been endowed with and let it steer you in the direction where both the bitter and the sweet fruits lie.
The only wrong decision is indecision. When you decide to head into the unknown, you know that you’ll learn what not to repeat and if it turns out to be right, lucky you!
