Decision making in practice.

Is decision making as easy as falling off a log for you, or is it sometimes fine, and other times strangely difficult?  If it's a mixed bag, you're not alone.  Decision making is complex, and often undermined by factors we are not necessarily aware of.  Seeing what's actually involved can set us up for making great decisions that we can carry out with calm, clear confidence. 

For the purposes of this blog post, I'm going to do this completely back to front, and give us my conclusion right here at the beginning.  Bear with me, all will become clear as we go along.  Here we go.  In order to successfully make good decisions, and carry them out, we need to do this:

• Make sure our unconscious brain modes orientation, fight, and flight, are on at a nice low level of activation (about 2 or 3 out of 10).
• Make sure our brain's survival mode is certain that we, and our plans, are safe.
• Get those unconscious brain modes on to the same page as our rational thinking, so we can both make the decision and carry it out.
• Use any of the decision making models you are familiar with for the rational processing required to reach a conclusion.

We usually miss out the first three steps entirely.

When it comes to decision making, we're blessed with numerous more or less complicated models.  You can see some of them here at Verywell Mind, feast on mental models for decision making here at Mind Lab Pro, and if you've not already had enough, Ivan Jureta sets out some common models in psychology for decision making here.   Good and thorough as these may be, the problem with all these models is that they assume that the processes of decision making are already fully functioning in the person making the decision.   They describe a sequence of mental steps leading to a decision, rather than telling us how to do it, or, indeed, how to get those underlying processes working.  

When I looked through these models, in the hope of finding at least one or two that addressed the fundamentals of decision making, it became clear very quickly that the actual how-to of decision making, the stuff that happens in the brain, is already assumed.  All these models have as part of their steps, at some stage, the instruction 'Make The Decision'.  But what if you've got all the information you need, you've done all the steps, and jumped through all the hoops, followed all the instructions, and, YET, you can't make the decision.

The fact is, that the processes involved in making decisions come from both the unconscious modes of the brain, and the rational modes of the brain.  The unconscious modes resemble the wiring that allows us to process information, reach a conclusion, and carry out the rational brain's intentions.  

The unconscious brain modes are physiological (neurological, biochemical) states, which allow and require things to happen.  These things are all to do with keeping our bodies going (heart rate, breathing, immune system etc.) and keeping us safe.  Our unconscious brain's processes are not affected by concepts, or anything abstract.  That includes words, numbers, a sense of past or future (everything is 'now' for the brain's unconscious modes);  and memories or imagination are both experienced as real, and as happening now.  Think lizard.

What the brain's unconscious modes need, to enable any kind of action, rational or otherwise, are these following three physiological states to be on and functioning at a nice low level of activation.  They are often blocked or dysfunctional because of life experiences, e.g. trauma, prolonged overwhelm, or burnout: 

• 'orientation', finding out what's happening, initially through the five senses.  If orientation is switched on at the unconscious level, it can happen emotionally, rationally, and intellectually.  If it is blocked or dysfunctional at the unconscious level, it causes confusion or hypervigilance at the rational levels too.
• 'fight', which is moving towards something or someone and engaging with them, or taking action.  Any action we take, from putting the kettle on and making a cup of tea, to chairing a tricky board meeting, requires fight.  It doesn't have to be hostile or aggressive.  Think moving towards (intellectually or physically) and engaging with an issue, a need, or a person.  It also needs to be switched on at the unconscious brain level to work at any other level.
• 'flight', which is the opposite of fight, is moving away from someone or something and disengaging from them.   This is what you do when you decide not to take a phone call, or to jump out of the way of a bicycle on the pavement.

The rational brain modes are, as you would think, thinking, analysing, synthesising, comparing, contrasting, imagining, remembering, assigning priority, planning. They include anything rational, intellectual, conceptual, or abstract.  Reading this paragraph requires orientation to be on, and lots of rational modes to be in action as well.  We so often behave as if the rational modes were the only modes necessary for decision making.  But we are wrong.

When decision making seems hard, or we don't seem to be able to trust our own decision, it's rarely because of our rational thought processes failing.  This is what is really important:  We cannot even activate these rational processes, if our brain's unconscious modes are switched off or dysfunctional, as a result of previous life experiences.  If our unconscious brains have bigger fish to fry, i.e. they perceive danger, they can also override our rational functioning.  This is not uncommon.

There has to be a combining of unconscious brain modes and rational brain modes, to allow us to make decisions and  carry them out.  If something is missing, we can neither make the decision, nor act upon it.  

What  actually happens in our brains when we are making a decision and carrying it out?  Let's follow some common steps in our familiar decision making models and find out:

• Observe:  for this we need orientation to be switched on at the unconscious brain level;  if we can't orientate to our surroundings, we can't observe, either physically or intellectually.
• Orient:  in this context, this is a combination of unconscious brain orientation (being able to take in any information at all) and rational brain modes like analysing, comparing, prioritising.  We need to orient in relation to a goal or a required outcome.  Otherwise we are just picking daisies in the sunshine.
• Decide:  this requires the unconscious brain mode of fight in order to be able to even imagine moving towards something and engaging with it.  If your brain won't let you imagine that (fight shut off or overwhelmed), you won't be able to compare actions (because actions are not possible) or prioritise or decide, using rational brain modes.  
• Act/do:  this requires the brain's unconscious fight mode to be on at a nice low level.  If it's not on, we can't take action.  (And if it's on too high, our taking action turns into taking really aggressive action, also not ideal).
• Plan:  this requires the survival brain's modes of orientation, fight, and possibly flight (if we want to make sure we avoid something).  It also requires our rational brain's modes of, well, everything.  Planning is highly rational, but made possible only through unconscious brain modes being operational.
• Test/check:  this means testing as to whether the action has worked or not.  Again, this requires a whole host of both unconscious and rational modes to be working in tandem.
• Exit:  this requires knowing when to exit, based on the testing, and being able to actually do it, an unconscious brain mode function (moving either towards or away from something).

You can see here that lots of things can go wrong.  We will all have experienced some of them at some stage or other.  In addition to our unconscious brain's mode not feeling safe, or not being able to switch on orientation, fight, or flight, there are even more possible problems.

For instance, if orientation, fight, or flight, is off or on too high we will overwhelm and go into what is known as 'freeze'.  In this physiological state, fight and flight are blocked or bypassed, no action is possible, and the body and brain freeze, allowing no movement and no thought.  It's a survival reaction.  The rational brain is totally overwhelmed in this state and the only response working is the survival response.  Try making a decision in this state.

We may also go into dissociation, which is a cutting off of awareness of anything that will further stress us, at physical, emotional, or intellectual levels.  This is also a survival response.  In dissociation, accurate orientation is impossible by definition, although we can act or run away.  Our heightened survival awareness runs the show then, and rational processes don't get a look-in beyond what would be necessary to keep us safe.  Also not good for making decisions.

This is the killer:  if our brain's unconscious mode, whose task is to keep us safe, assesses our plans/actions/desires/intentions to be risky to our survival, based on its previous experiences, it will veto them, even if all the modes are working just fine.  The unconscious brain really does run the show.  

So that's why we need to make sure that all modes are functioning fully, our entire brain sees what we are planning as safe, and both rational and unconscious modes are agreed.  That way decision making can indeed be as easy as observe, orientate, decide, and act, or any of the more complex models.

Because decision making is such a huge part of life, and has such an impact on our enjoyment and wellbeing, my one-to-ones and programmes below all address one, other, or all of these factors.  Go to the home page here for more information.   

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