good decisions Archives - Amazing Health Advances

How to Make Healthy Decisions Under High Pressure & Anxiety

AHA Publisher — Fri, 26 Nov 2021 08:00:00 +0000

Dr. Caroline Leaf – In this podcast (episode #334) and blog, I speak about the link between anxiety, stress, and decision-making. Often, when we are in an anxious state, we cannot seem to make a decision, or, if we do, we end up making a choice we regret. I know this has happened to me many times! What should we do when this happens? Is there a way out of this mental swamp? Thankfully, yes! To make healthy decisions, our brain needs optimal blood, oxygen and energy flow, especially in the front of the brain (the frontal lobe). When we are in toxic stress, this flow is constricted, which can impact how and what we choose to say or do in the moment, as well as our overall wellbeing. However, we can learn how to make our stress work for us instead of against us. The key point here is to see our anxiety as a signal telling us something is going on in our lives that needs to be addressed. Anxiety is not something we should suppress or ignore. It is designed to get our attention in a focused way, so we can deal with the disequilibrium we are experiencing in our life. If we ignore this signal, it can affect our wellbeing, putting us in a toxic stress state that can impact our ability to make decisions and increase our impulsivity. It can also impact our mental and physical health due to the mind-brain-body connection (known as psychoneurobiology). We need to learn how to tune into these signals and manage them before they take over our thinking. This includes nothing our unique red flags: how anxiety and stress show up in our life, how we feel emotionally and physically, and how we can manage these signals to make healthy decisions. Self-regulation is key! When we make a decision, we should try to get into the habit of observing ourselves. Why did we choose this? What impacted our choice? Why did we feel this way? How did this impact our ability to decide? One way I like to do this is by practicing pausing just before I make a decision. During this pause, I breathe in deeply for 3 counts, and breathe out for 7 counts, and do this a few times depending on how I feel and how important the choice I am about to make is. As I do this, I am better able to observe what I feel in the moment because I am getting my neurophysiology under control, which, in turn, helps me better understand my anxiety signals and stress state, bringing back balance into my brain so I can make a good decision. This really is a great way to calm down the mind when things are difficult! If, after doing this, you still feel you need more time and information (as often happens with really big decisions), this is totally okay! Just say you need more time to think about it (if possible)—never be ashamed of needing more time or asking for more space to think something through. If you feel a lack of confidence in the moment, remind yourself of all the times you made a good choice in the past. Give yourself a little pep talk: remember when you made a choice under pressure and managed to successfully overcome a challenge. If you still feel stuck, work on what I call the “possibilities mindset”. Think of all the possibilities in each situation. How will this choice play out? How did this play out in the past? What if you made a different choice? What if this happened? What have you learned? This is a great brain exercise and a reminder that life isn’t linear—we can never truly grasp all the threads that lead us to where we are, or where we will be. If you are not sure how to do this, use the 5-step mind management system I developed based on my clinical practice and research, called the Neurocycle (for more on this, check out my latest book Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess and my app Neurocycle). First, gather awareness of the information you need and your past choices. What is the data telling you? What worked? What didn’t? Now, reconceptualize all “failures” as “I haven’t failed; I have learned x things that now I know don’t work, which is great to know!” Reflect on what these lessons are by asking, answering, and discussing them to find the information, emotions, and physical responses in your brain and body. Write down what you have been reflecting on, in as much detail as possible, to help organize your thinking. Then, recheck what you have written to add more insight and look for patterns. Now, practice looking at what you have written and use it to make good choices. During this time, watch how this carries over into your day-to-day life; observe and write how this mental exercise helps you, especially during tough times. To read the original article click here.

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Why Do We Keep Making Wrong Decisions? + Tips to Help You Become an Expert Decision Maker

AHA Publisher — Thu, 10 Oct 2019 07:00:24 +0000

Dr. Caroline Leaf – We literally need to train ourselves to observe our thinking and feeling in response to incoming information and analyze them objectively before making a decision, otherwise we can fall prey to reactive and potentially harmful choices. I am sure you have asked yourself many times why you keep making the same bad choice over and over again. I know I have! Recently, this happened to me: my schedule was so busy, and my husband and I had little time to rest. As a result, what was a very little issue on a phone call with someone we know turned into an explosive fight because of our bad assumptions and decisions. However, we eventually calmed down and analyzed the root causes of our choices, and how we could learn from the situation in order to avoid making the same wrong decisions over and over again. So, in this week’s blog and podcast, I discuss the four main reasons we make bad decisions, how to stop making these decisions, how to become a proactive decision maker, and how to re-train your brain to make better choices. There are two main parts to this process: first, understanding how to be a proactive decision-maker, and, second, recognizing the conditions under which bad decisions are generally made. Let’s Talk About Being a Proactive Decision Maker First: We are thinking beings. And, as we think we feel, and as we feel we choose; we are literally doing this every 10 seconds in response to an incoming stream of signals from our environment. The signals are from people, discussions, social media, relationships, work, texts, calls emails, the news–life in general. This thinking, feeling and choosing response is our mind-in-action. It is filtered through the complexity of our own experiences—our stored memories. These memories move into the conscious mind in response to these signals of life, influencing our perceptions. They therefore need to be analyzed in a deliberate and intentional way to see if the perspective they provide is healthy, or if it is toxic. We literally need to train ourselves to observe our thinking and feeling in response to incoming information and analyze them objectively before making a decision, otherwise we can fall prey to reactive and potentially harmful choices. This deliberate, intentional, self-regulative way of thinking is proactive, and the good news is that our brains will respond in a very healthy way if we practice doing this on a regular basis. In fact, when we do this we become wiser! Part of this process is what I call “mental autopsy”: we examine our past bad decisions, deciding what our triggers were, what was wrong with how we reacted, what perspectives dominated our thinking, feeling and choosing and how we can learn from these situations and react better in the future. Doing a mental-autopsy on past bad decisions will help prevent you from making the same mistakes again! This kind of decision-making is very different to reactive decision-making, which is “shooting from the hip” and impulsive. You don’t analyze or learn from your mistakes, which can lead to a pattern of wrong decisions in your life. This is what happened in my fight with my husband—we made assumptions because we did not take the time to examine our perceptions and thinking, feeling and choosing, and just let our emotions get the better of us, which made the situation worse! It’s important to note that making a decision on assumptions is one of the major reasons we make wrong decisions. It is always vital to ask yourself if what you are thinking is based on fact or based on your own assumptions. So, how can you do this in your life? We have as humans to stand back and observe our own thinking, feeling and choosing and existing upcoming memories, as well as the perspectives they provide, and weigh this all up and decide if it’s good for us—this is called our Multiple Perspective Advantage (MPA for short, which I discuss in my book Switch On Your Brain). As you do this, you become an objective observer and disassociate yourself from the situation you are in, as though you are helping someone else evaluate their thinking, feeling, choosing and perspective. In this way, you can analyze the pros and cons of how you are viewing a particular situation, and what the best next steps are. My new app Switch is a great tool for helping you go through this process. It is based on my 5-step program, which is designed to help you identify and eliminate the root of your toxic stress, and help you build a healthy new thinking habits through the mental process of reconceptualization by teaching you how to stand outside of yourself and observe your own thinking, feeling and choosing. Now, Let’s Review the Conditions Under Which It Is So Easy to Make a Bad Decision: 1. Making decisions when tired: the brain has limited energy and needs recharging. We do this through lifestyle choices like good nutrition and exercise, but, even more so, with good mind-management techniques. Our mind is infinite and tireless; our brains are finite and get tired. When tired, chemicals don’t flow like they should and the internal networks of the brain can get stuck or over-fire. This is akin to driving through a storm with broken wind screen wipers, which is what happened in the fight with my husband. It is therefore so important that we take regular mental health breaks in the day in the form of “thinker moments”, where we daydream for a few moments to a few minutes – I recommend a minute or so every hour. These moments give your brain a rest and allow it to reboot and heal by letting your mind wander and daydream, which increases your clarity of thought and organizes the networks of your brain, rather than just letting toxic mindsets build up in the brain. For more information on thinker moments and how to make them a part of your daily routine, see my book, Think, Learn, Succeed. Also, make sure you take a decent break midday, control the number of hours you work in a day (as much as possible), take mental vacations by watching your favorite TV show or reading a good novel, and to avoiding burnout by listening to emotional and physical warning signals your body send you. For more on this, listen to the podcast I did on dealing with the “Monday scaries” and treating the weekend like a vacation. 2. Extreme emotions: emotions are physically represented in the brain as chemicals, which are often called “molecules of emotion”. They are attached to information that is vibrating in the protein tree-like memory structures of the brain. We create emotions as we think; if our thinking is chaotic, the thought trees in the brain are chaotic. These are like trees being blown in a bad storm, which can create brain damage and lead to bad choices because we won’t be thinking clearly. When you find yourself in this kind of situation, it is best to do some breathing exercises, which dissipates cortisol and calms down your nervous system. You should also acknowledge out loud how you feel; differentiate, label and write your emotions down. You can also do a very simple physical exercise like tapping your feet, standing up and walking around for a few seconds, rotating your head, stretching or yawn to shift your focus from your own chaotic thinking and help calm you down. It is also important to let people know when you are feeling extreme emotions and cannot mentally make a decision right now—don’t try hide or suppress how you feel, as this will make things worse! For more information on how to do this, see my book Think, Learn, Succeed. 3. Distractions: these can lead to cognitive multitasking, which affects the flow of quantum and electromagnetic energy throughout our brain circuitry. This, in turn, reduces intelligence in the moment…just when you need it to make a good decision! We need to recognize that as humans can do busy well, but we need to compartmentalize our tasks. This doesn’t mean you have to slow down. Rather, you just have to get organized by saying things to yourself like “I can’t finish this now but will as soon as I am done sorting this problem…” or “I will make a note of where I am in this document and what I was thinking, so I can pick up here later…”. You can also tell people who need your attention to give you the time to finish what you are doing—don’t just be a “yes man”! This will help you compartmentalize, keeping things tidy in your mind and helping you prioritize what needs attention and what can wait. It’s a choice you can make to not allow distractions to interrupt your flow. Remember, you control the distractions, the distractions don’t control you! See my books Think, Learn, Succeed and Switch On Your Brain for more information on the dangers of multitasking and what to do instead. 4. Too many choices at once: these are like too many surges of energy all hitting the brain at once, and can make you feel overwhelmed and stressed out. In many cases, this can lead to decision-making paralysis, or impulse choices that you will later regret. The solution: take the time to sort out your thinking and choices. You can do this by breathing in and out deeply, imagining holding up a shield around your mind, and then slowly focusing on each choice (one at a time) by writing them down as you speak out loud. Next, prioritize the top 2-3 options and toss the rest; force yourself to notlook back at the other options, reminding yourself that even if you made the wrong decision you learned something. Finally, set a deadline for making a decision. To read the original article click here. For more articles by Dr. Leaf click here.

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