HOW OUR BRAIN MAKES DECISIONS

Our brain is a compulsive “bean counter.”

For everything that our brain decides to do, there is first a cost/benefit analysis.

In fact, for everything that happens, our brain does a cost/benefit analysis.

In November of 2020 one of the world’s leading neuroscientists Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett, came out with a new book, Seven and A Half Lessons About the Brain.

In it she wrote:

Your Brain’s most important job is to control your body - to manage allostasis - by predicting energy needs before they arise so you can efficiently make worthwhile movements and survive. 

Your brain continually invests your energy in the hopes of earning a good return, such as food, shelter, affection, or physical protection, so you can perform nature’s most vital task: passing your genes to the next generation.

So our brain analyzes, for example, the cost of going to college for four years versus the benefit of having a higher paying job; or the cost of investing in a new factory versus the benefit in greater production.

But I was surprised to see Barrett include “affection” as something our brain feels necessary for evolutionary survival, even while I agree that seeking affection is important to the brain.

Receiving affection affirms our self-worth, and I believe that the brain considers the costs and benefits to self-worth in everything that we do, in everything that happens, and in everything it judges might happen.

And it bases our valuation of self-worth on whether we are experiencing, or are likely to experience, “value-fulfillment.” 

If we judge (for example) that keeping a home tidy is important, that is a value. 

When our home gets untidy we might, therefore, tidy it up. That will give us a good feeling of value-fulfillment, which affirms our self-worth. 

If we notice that another person’s home is untidy, we might get a good feeling when we compare how tidy we are, because our judgment affirms our self-worth by comparison. 

If someone compliments how tidy our home is, that also affirms our self-worth. How we compare to others, and how we are judged, form part of our brain’s cost/benefit analysis.

In one experiment subjects had to choose between two job offers. The job offers were similar in all ways but one.

At Company A, the pay was higher, but all the other employees with the same position, were paid more.

At Company B, the pay was lower, but all the other employees with the same position, were paid less.

Now if value-fulfillment was purely an evolutionary device to ensure that we pass on our genes, we would expect that subjects would instinctively take the job with more income. The more income you have, the more you can do to ensure you have children and that they are likely to thrive and have children of their own.

But in fact subjects were more likely to choose the job with the lower pay.

Apparently, for these folk, their brain had done the calculation and judged that the benefit of more money was not worth the cost. What cost? The cost to self-worth.

This, perhaps, explains the “starving artist.” 

From an evolutionary perspective, it makes no sense to use what little funds you have to buy paints rather than food. But if the artist’s brain judges that her/his artwork is more value-fulfilling, more self-worth affirming, than eating, then s/he willingly starves for her/his work.

Value-fulfillment gives meaning to existence. 

And part of value-fulfillment is expressing our values outwardly in life.

Do we risk missing the beginning of the football game (which we value) to help the old lady across the street (which we also value)? 

Our brain does the cost/benefit analysis and based upon how it assesses the value-fulfillment in each option, chooses the one that gives us the most points (metaphorically).

And this cost/benefit analysis goes on incessantly, everyday and in everything that comes up. 

Because I use a form of mindfulness called Mindfulness Pathfinding, I often notice the funny inner dialogue by brain has.

The other day I accidentally broke my wife’s small makeup mirror by knocking it off the bathroom counter.

My brain went, “Shit!” 

Perceived loss of points because my brain judges that this indicates I am clumsier than I should be. 

My brain goes for a save, “Well, it wasn’t really my fault. The mirror shouldn’t have been there!”

Justification mitigates loss of points as the brain judges that yes, I am somewhat at fault, but not totally responsible.

My brain quickly looks for any future threat to self-worth. “Jeanne (my wife) is going to be pissed at me!”

Projection of possible future cost in points because I will be judged as worth less (not “worthless”) by my spouse. 

My brain goes for a proactive save, “So don’t tell her. She might think she did it.”

Strategy to prevent possible future cost to value-fulfillment.

My brain does a quick analysis, “No, that wouldn’t be right to let her think that. Better to just come clean and tell her.”

Decision based upon assignment of greater value-fulfillment to acting on a core personal value: Being Honest. The cost in points for being dishonest being greater than the cost in points for being judged clumsy.

My brain cautions, “But don’t say anything right now. I have to get to my appointment and Jeanne might get upset and then we might get delayed as we deal with this. Wait till we are in the car.”

The strategy here is to ensure the value-fulfillment of Being honest, while also ensuring the value-fulfillment of another core value of mine: Being On Time. 

Once in the car I told Jeanne about the mirror and she was pissed.

My brain responds, “Well, I expected that. Perhaps I should mount a defense. No, that will only annoy Jeanne even more. Better to accept responsibility.”

There is a point gain in having my prediction affirmed. 

The potential benefit of gain in points by offering a defense is judged to be outweighed by the potential cost in points if my defense just makes Jeanne judge my self-worth even more harshly. 

Now, I’m not saying that our brain literally counts value points. 

It is more likely that it considers things in terms of the feeling they will produce.

Psychiatrist and addiction expert Judson Brewer found that the brain assigns value to decisions that produce a good feeling.

Value-fulfillment feels good.

Of course, the analysis can be at times complicated. I judge your house as untidy, therefore, by comparison, I feel better about myself....but I judge the criticism of you as being unworthy, so I feel bad for choosing to add value-fulfillment in this way.

And the analysis is always uniquely yours. I find value-fulfillment in uncovering new things about the history of the Town of Mamaroneck from doing research. It adds to my self-worth that I am doing this work, expressing my values this way.

For you, maybe, not so much.

But back to the story...

So I am sitting in the car and my brain is thinking, “Jeanne is annoyed at me and this is bad and may get worse. What can I do?”

Here's where I played mindfulness coach to my brain using Mindfulness Pathfinding. 

There are only two questions you really have for any situation, problem, or goal:

How can I get a better experience here, and/or how can I get a better outcome?

We already have the answers to those questions. Our brain may not, but our non-conscious mind does. It is the Navigator. Our brain is the Pilot (although sometimes...maybe often, Pilot thinks he doesn’t need to look at the GPS when driving!??)

So I ask my brain, as if it were a separate person, 

“What comes up when you ask Navigator: ‘What is the path here?’” (to a better experience or better outcome).

Notice that I am not asking my brain to analyze the situation I am in or to calculate my best move. I am not asking it to strategize.  

I am not asking it to do anything other than just look at what comes up when it asks the non-conscious mind what the path is here.

This is mindfulness: paying attention, on purpose, without resistance to whatever comes up. 

There is no doing, just looking.

At the deeper level of our non-conscious mind, we monitor existing and developing conditions to predict what actions will best provide us with the most opportunity for the most value-fulfillment.

That guidance, updated moment-by-moment, is streamed 24/7 from the non-conscious mind to the brain, which is at the controls.

In my working model, the non-conscious mind represents our Navigator, the brain, our Pilot.

When you are feeling basically happy and fulfilled, the guidance from your Navigator is streaming through.  

When you are feeling stressed out, or despondent, that streaming guidance is being blocked or distorted. 

And the reason this occurs is just because of the way that our brain happened to get wired over our lifetime. It has created a complex internal Description of “The World,” “Life,” and of course “Who I Am.”

And it automatically refers to that Description to protect its assessment of our self-worth.

Navigator constantly seeks opportunities for your fulfillment.

Pilot does too but puts the affirmation of your self worth first.

And s/he's overprotective and often rather negative and pessimistic, so often those traits filter out Navigator's better informed guidance.

What we are doing in Mindfulness Pathfinding, by asking our one question is distracting the brain’s spotlight focus by using curiosity. The brain responds by pulling back to a floodlight focus.

So in my role as a coach to my brain, I asked him:

“What comes up when you ask Navigator, ‘What is the path here?’”

Then, instead of bouncing off the walls trying to thinking of the best strategy, or what might happen, my brain became all curious and began to look to see what would come up.

And in that moment of quietly looking, what up wasn’t even a thought or strategy, it was Jeanne saying,

“Well, it’s really not a big deal. I can just pick up another one at the store.”

To which my brain shouted (silently), “Score! I get my points back!”

Because we want our brain to make Pathfinding its natural approach to engaging life, we need to “wire in” this new behavior.

We do that by helping our brain associate this decision with a good feeling (as per Brewer). 

So I ask my brain, “How do you feel, champ?”

From employing Mindfulness Pathfinding, our brain discovers that it always has all the guidance and internal resources it needs to make a better experience and get a better outcome for any situation, problem, or goal.

If you choose, see what happens if you apply this model to the way your brain reacts to things that come up in life (or in your head). 

For me it makes my brain more understandable.

My best to you,

peter ????

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The Pathfinding Project, powered by Mindfulness Pathfinding and You!

To empower those that mindfulness meditation has left behind, I developed the evolving form I call Mindfulness Pathfinding: easy, engaging, effective.

As vital as the development of this alternative gateway into mindfulness is, it absolutely requires a whole new way of coaching people on how to integrate it into their daily life.

That is the purpose of the radically different approach of The Pathfinding Project. No six-week course, no book, no guided meditation library.

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