Tools for hard decisions
Clients often come to therapy in the middle of a big decision - whether or not to pursue a career change, stay in a relationship, or start trying for a family, to name a few.
In these moments, it’s important to embrace the idea that you will ever know with 100% certainty which path you should take, as well as that the idea of the “right” decision is often not as binary as we may think. That said, in these moments there are many different ways of tapping the information and intelligence that will guide you closer to a direction that is more aligned for you.
These are called different ways of knowing.
Different Ways of Knowing
The first “way of knowing” is the one you're probably the most familiar with: Logic.
This way of knowing relies on our left brain, and the rational and cognitive processing powers that shine when it comes to all of those pro-con lists and checkboxes. Many of us grew up strengthening our cognitive decision-making skills because of the ways in which we were taught to think throughout school, our careers, our political decisions, and more.
The problem is, many of us have become over-reliant on this one way of knowing, and find ourselves all too often saying that it looks perfect on paper, but still doesn't feel right.
Well, this should come as no surprise when we have, in fact, all but ignored our feelings throughout the decision-making process!
Cue other ways of knowing:
Emotional knowing
Intuitive knowing
Physical knowing
Spiritual knowing
Communal knowing
Experiential knowing
These ways of knowing are like highly sophisticated tools we’ve constantly underutilized. In the blink of an eye, your brain can consolidate years of memories, experiences, and data and spits it out into one simple sensation we call a "gut feeling,” or another emotion like fear, frustration, joy, or excitement.
You can think of it kind of like a food processor - we have to keep feeding the top with things like additional information, experiments and experiences for the output to become more and more valuable. But the biggest step we often miss is allowing the space to receive the output at all.
Practices for Tuning Into Different Ways of Knowing
This is where dedicated practices to listen to your other ways of knowing come in.
Meditation
Meditation is a wonderful way to allow all the back and forth spinning around in your brain to settle for a bit, and to see what answers are already gently resting right beneath the surface.
Prayer
Prayer can also be a powerful practice, whether you believe in a higher power or not. For some, it's a way to tap specifically into a "higher" intelligence and practice a more spiritual way of knowing. But even for the most atheistic, prayer can be a great way to take a break from the act of answering and simply practice the art of listening. Ask your question and then shut up. You just might be surprised by what comes up.
Acting “As If”
Try your decision on for size by imaging you've already made it. You don't have to tell anyone, but see how if feels to live in your new reality for a day, or even a week. Then try the alternative. You may find that feeling into your decision experientially can go far beyond what intellectualizating your decision can alone.
None of this is meant to negate our cognitive ways of knowing. After all, how many times have you had a gut reaction that was wrong? The heuristics our brains use can still be misleading and often fail to address our existing biases. The point is not to make decisions solely using one way of knowing or another, but to be able to flex different approaches when called for, be discerning about each's strengths and limitations, and balance and integrate them and the different information they provide.
To begin strengthening your other intelligences, consider picking up a regular practice - be it yoga, meditation, or art, or more. At the end of the day, it's not just about changing how we answer our questions, but changing our relationship with them, too.