Joy or Pain: Emotional Decision Making
My sons had been asking for a pet for years. They wanted a dog, a cat or anything that wasn’t human. My husband isn’t fond of cats- to put it mildly so that was out. We all love dogs but I knew walking them and caring for them would end up becoming my responsibility and that wasn’t an option for me. Listen to Episode 6, Emotional Decision making: https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/tjr4e2/EmotionalDecisionMaking.mp3 One day, through a series of seemingly unrelated events, I ended up buying a pair of bunny rabbits for them. It was surreal. I haven’t had a pet for decades, and to make it even more interesting, they had no clue I was going to do this! You should have seen their faces! We were all supposed to go on a family trip to watch #2 play in a match- but #1 dropped out. He wanted to stay with the rabbits. The reason it took a long time to finally make my children’s dream come true was that I was trying to save them from pain. The pain that comes when you lose a pet. You see, I had several of those growing up. I remember the tears and the hopelessness that the finality of death brings. I was not interested in exposing my kids to that. What I didn’t know, was that by shutting the door to pain, I was also locking joy out- for joy and pain come into our hearts through the same door. When we make decisions solely in response to our emotions, we are leaving the outcome to chance. The more I thought about the role joy and pain play in making my decisions in addition to the subject of intention, the more I realised a hard truth; I used joy or pain as indicators for making decisions. This surprised me because I go on about how flippant emotions are, but did not realise I had upgraded my emotions to a level they had no business being at. Emotions are unreliable and shouldn’t feature in the process of making serious decisions. Think about it. How often do you feel happy about one situation and the joy wears off and it eventually becomes irritation? Between us, the level of happiness we enjoy at having those rabbits fluctuates- it all depends on whether they’re being cute and cuddly or biting through our phone charger cables. On the Living Inside Out Podcast, Episode 6, I share my thoughts on the dangers of making emotional decisions along with some tips on how to change your process. There is, after all, a higher-ranking space that we all have access to where we can draw wisdom from. Listen and share your thoughts too! Have you subscribed to the podcast yet? Subscribe here: Apple Podcasts | Android | Google Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | RSS
