Emotions Aren’t the Enemy of Good Decision-Making

Decision making is stressful, so the best time to prepare for good choosing is when there’s no choice at stake. That’s when you can invest in your emotional intelligence and spiritual maturity so that those muscles are strong and trained when it’s decision or game time.

decision-making skills will rapidly erode if you are emotionally charged. Stress, anger, fear, anxiety, greed, and euphoria are all mental states antithetical to quality decisions.

Emotions are neither good nor bad; they simply are. They cannot be avoided. But emotionalism (i.e., decision making based on emotions) is bad, can be controlled, and should be avoided. So instead of examining each of the many individual emotions, this chapter will focus on the entity that epitomizes emotionalism: the crowd.

Decision-making based on emotional intuition, without the aid of reason to keep it in line, pretty much always sucks.

It is not easy to master our emotions while assessing information that matters to us, not least because our emotions can lead us astray in different directions.

Whatever decision you’re facing, ask yourself, “Is there a way to make sure I will stick to the path I’ve decided is best?” By thinking through your options, and precommitting to courses of action, you free up space to tackle other problems. Even if we’re waiting as long as possible to decide, we now know exactly what to focus on and do when the ti

short-term emotion, which can be an unreliable adviser. When people share the worst decisions they’ve made in life, they are often recalling choices made in the grip of visceral emotion: anger, lust, anxiety, greed.

Considering what motivates the decisions of others, especially when those decisions affect you, is also essential. Incentives matter. Take a negotiation course, because skilled negotiators are masters at figuring out what is important to the other party and arriving at mutually beneficial solutions. Even if you are not dealing directly with another