Three Ways Your Emotions Can Warp Your Decisions

Our emotions often prevent us from seeing the full picture, causing us to make choices we regret later on. Here’s how to create the space needed to think with clarity and focus.

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Whether it’s sending a passive-aggressive email to a coworker, or not speaking up when you have a great idea, or even saying something rude when you should have said nothing at all, we’ve all made decisions we regret—and then tortured ourselves by thinking, “What if I’d made a different choice?”

That’s where mindfulness comes in.

When we practice tuning in to the chatter of our minds and sweeping sensations of our bodies, we learn to separate those triggers from the deep well of knowledge that is our innate awareness. By practicing mindfulness we slowly give ourselves permission to choose how we respond in the world. It’s pretty powerful stuff.

In this Big Think video, former Canadian intelligence officer Shane Parrish, creator of the website and learning community Farnam Street, shares three tips for making more mindful decisions:

1) Don’t make a decision when you’re excited or frazzled

Many of us are guilty of making decisions in the heat of the moment—during a fight with our partner, in the middle of a stressful work meeting, or even when you’re over-excited. But Parrish says making decisions when we’re…