Are you using the correct mind?

Why do people say this approvingly, “They’re so spontaneous.” On the other hand, they may complain, “They can be so impulsive.” Are you using the correct mind to make decisions?

I’m not an especially spontaneous or impulsive person but can appears so to other people. In truth, before doing anything, I always consider my actions and decisions carefully. I even catch myself rehearsing what I’m about to say, making it perfect so I can’t be misunderstood. I try to appear spontaneous but I’m not foolproof. I can come across as a bit distant or cold if people don’t understand and appreciate the care, I’ve taken for them. I’ve learned this is one aspect of my neurodivergent masking.?

I may not be innately spontaneous, but that doesn’t mean I can’t make very quick decisions when I need to. To others it appears I’ve become more spontaneous and sometime impulsive. However, it only seems like spontaneity because I’ve practiced. As the adage says you must put in 10,000 hours to master something.

Definitions

Never mind interpreting other people’s behaviours, I used to find noticing and understanding my own tricky and confusing. To help, I like a good definition, often resorting to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) to explain to me how I comprehend and feel about words and their implications. For example, why is it we value someone being spontaneous, but dislike them being impulsive? Their definitions seem remarkably similar, virtual synonyms:

Impulsive – acting without forethought.

Spontaneous - performed or occurring as a result of a sudden impulse or inclination and without premeditation or external stimulus.

No help there then, but who am I to argue with the wisdom of the OED? We shall see!

Further inspection shows that a words definition and its modern usage aren’t one and the same thing. What if we turn the definitions on their heads and compare them?

Apparently, spontaneity is, “without forethought” and impulsion is, “without premeditation or external stimulus”. Implying our minds play no part in the process. This feels unsatisfactory to me. What we conclude when we observe spontaneity, is a superficial visible consequence of someone else’s mind working hard invisibly behind the scenes. Let me explain.

Reflexes and spontaneity

When a doctor taps beneath our knee with their little hammer, our foot kicks forward automatically. We’re surprised by this spinal reflex. We seem to have nothing to do with it, beyond our control. The external stimulus of the hammer’s tap is sensed in the patellar tendon and a nerve pulse passes to the spinal cord. Instead of heading on up to the head, it leaps across to a motor nerve in the spinal cord which in turn, fires an impulse back directly to the thigh muscles triggering them to contract. We see our lower leg lift. We have no control over this action. We didn’t get to decide. Stopping the reflex consciously is impossible. The external stimulus applied by the doctor triggers the reflex without our brain being involved. This is true spontaneity!

Our everyday actions may appear to be automatic, but they’re far from it. Consider the my impulsive purchase of a camera. How did I find myself in a shop that sold cameras? I must have made a judgement decision to head there (priming). Why, did I head for a camera shop and not one selling washing machines? Something more fundamental lay behind my decision. I’m not a regular buyer of flowers so, why did I buy them in that moment? Then there’s the whole issue of personal intent lying behind each decision, (more of this later).

When I bought my wife flowers it wasn’t her Birthday, nor was it our anniversary or Christmas, and I wasn’t feeling guilty about anything. Why were flowers so important to me in that moment? On this occasion I was heading home after a long day teaching. During the ten-minute walk from work to the tube station I began thinking about Mel my wife. Looking up I saw the florist near to the tube station entrance. In the space of a heartbeat, I’d decided to buy her flowers. Just for the hell of it! Within five minutes I had my bunch and was heading down the escalator towards the platforms. I felt a warm tingly sensation all over, in anticipation of Mel’s reaction to the flowers.

Back to cameras. Was it impulsive? An onlooker might think I blew ￡750 on a frivolity, (Actually Mel lent me the money). After all, I had a perfectly good camera on my phone. What lay behind the purchase was frustration. Frustration with my phone’s lack of a decent telephoto capability. My eyes and brain would see a great scene in front of me, but the phone couldn’t deliver an acceptable image for me to share. This frustration festered a while, maybe six months, before something in me said, “Now, buy it now!” The final decision and purchase were very quick, but the unconscious build up to the decision took months before I was convinced of its wisdom. Enough time to overcome any doubts. But why did I need the camera? Simple frustration isn’t enough to explain my decision.

Decisions

Decisions drive our actions. A simple decision may be to take no action at all. Alternatively, we may take on a complex series of integrated actions, each step requiring decisions before moving to the next action.

We say to ourselves, “I’m happy or unhappy with my decision.” Implying an emotional component of decision making. When we vacillate people may say, “Find the guts to make a decision”, implying courage are part of the process. Are our decisions exempt from courage and emotion? I’d argue they’re fundamentally entwined. All our decisions take courage and are ultimately emotional not solely intellectual. We may fear potential ridicule if we buy the wrong kind of flowers, or be overwhelmed by the thought of marrying the wrong person.

Earlier, I mentioned personal intent. Buying Mel flowers at first sight is a simple generous and spontaneous gesture of love. “Heart” going direct to “Gut” if you like. Did I ever engage my “Head”? Yes, I was already thinking of Mel, I saw flowers, I planned to buy them, then considered which ones she would like. Then I unconsciously interrogated my “Gut” to discover it was entirely happy with the idea that Mel would be the beneficiary. Boom! Job done. Flowers bought. An observer would only see spontaneity.

Not so simple with the camera. In this case I was the beneficiary, so, on first inspection a selfish purchase. It would, of course, be my camera. I would be taking photos. Clearly, some work had to be done to justify the decision. Initially, I felt guilty at the expense for something selfish. I asked myself, “Why this camera, and why buy it now?”

In truth, there was an element of childlike, “I just want it!”. I have a history of buying things and letting them languish. I turned to thinking about the people I would show my pictures to, and why. I could share important moments in relationships, enthral people with beautiful images, recall events, and trigger feelings. I was intrigued by the pleasure it might bring them. It was, after all, not such a selfish whim.

Making wiser decisions

What is the process of decision-making, how can we make better decisions and how can we practice making wiser decisions?

PAY CLOSER ATTENTION TO EVERYTHING!

Sorry OED, but I can’t think of any decision or action entirely independent of an internal or external trigger. Do we ever respond unthinkingly in ways akin to a reflex, or do we always engage our mind first?

Step one is paying more bloody attention to our everchanging internal and external worlds.

A word of caution here. I’m not encouraging you towards rumination and giving undue weight to your every thought and emotion, or indeed maintaining a hypervigilant watch for external threats. No, I’m simply saying notice life more acutely and nonjudgmentally. If something has happened already you can’t change it, only learn from it. We have a mostly modest ability to influence the future. You can only operate in the present.

Let’s begin small with the flowers for Mel. When I think about Mel, I feel her presence, not only in my head but in my ‘Heart mind’. My love for her is unconditional. When an external trigger comes along, this time a florist shop in front of me, I’m primed and ready to act. My ‘Head mind’ is now engaged assessing all my options. I want to stop and get Mel flowers, but do I have enough time? I work out that if I buy them within the next ten minutes, I can get the next tube and still have time to walk briskly (I never run) across Waterloo Station to catch my train home. Next, which flowers do I choose? I have a list of her favourites lodged in my memory. Which do they have available? Phew, they have alstroemeria in two different colours. How many should I get? One bunch of each. Is that too expensive? It is Mel, so no it's not too much. With no more conscious thought, my ‘Gut mind’ tells me this is the right decision. How do I know? Because I’m flooded with adrenalin and recognise the bodily sensations of elation, not anxiety. I’m “happy” with my decision.

Emotional triage!

It seems every decision we make, large or small, is finally an emotional one. Our “Gut mind’s” adrenaline response may be weak or strong. I ask myself, “What does it score on a scale of 1 to 10 for intensity?”Simultaneously, I ask, “Is this fear or excitement?”. After all, don’t we say, “Listen to your gut”?

Our “Gut mind” is the final arbiter of all decision making but left to act alone it’s unpredictably stupid. How then can we become better and quicker at making wiser decisions more often? Before trusting our “Gut mind”, we must engage our two other minds – Heart and Head.

Simply put, our “Heart mind” is all about our big “Why”, and our “Head mind” is all about the “How’s”. Without the “Why”, plans created by our Head may not only be unfit for purpose, but they may also, without the Heart mind’s” guidance, slide inexorably into immorality and possibly evil. Alternatively, without a “How”, we remain stuck in a deep desire to be helpful, but with no practical avenues to achieve it. In either situation, our “Gut mind” will remain unconvinced, never letting us follow through.

Begin with your Heart’s big “Why?”. Unchangeable, it comes from love, compassion, purpose, and our non-negotiable core values. Making for a reassuring foundation supporting your “Head mind’s” prodigious creativity and analysis. Finally, use your “Gut mind” to triage viable decisions and actions.

You may for example, sense a score of 8 to a 10 on the fear scale of your Gut’s reaction to the thought of buying that camera or making that speech. If so, you lack the conviction to carry out your decision. So, stop, don’t fight it. Go back and spend more time with your “Heart mind’s” big “Why”. Then play around again with your Head mind’s, “How”. Changing your plan, even tearing it up and beginning again. Triage the new plan with your Gut’s response. Repeat this virtuous cycle until your Gut mind is “Happy”, and excited enough about your decision that you can act. This is the foundation of our courage and self-worth.

It’s how your three minds want to work. The more you go round the cycle with the small stuff of life, the more adept you become at making wiser decisions. Everything speeds up over time. You’ll find making the bigger, more emotional, decisions in life easier. People may comment positively about your wisdom. Life becomes less frenetic. Rather than flashing past, you’ll notice and appreciate more of its colour!

Heart – Head – Gut = WISDOM.

As to my camera – the image at the top of this post is one of my favourites. Purely spontaneous of course! I hope you enjoy it!