SEC17/W2| While making decisions, what do you prefer to follow: heart or mind?

Hello and welcome to my blog. I hope you are all doing well and enjoying this season of engagement challange. Today, I choose to write a task set by Incredible India community which is decison making.

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What is your preference while making decisions, heart or mind? Do you think we need both in terms of making decisions? Describe reasons.

In some circumstances, I prefer a heart over mind while making decisions, and in others, I prefer mind over heart. In some other situations, I make a balanced approach between heart and mind. As for my experience, I think a balanced approach between heart and mind while making decisions yields the most successful outcomes. The balance between heart and mind actually represents a balance between the emotionality and rationality of the decision, with the heart on the side of emotions and the mind going with rationality.

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So, I am of the opinion that we need both while making decisions. Let's discuss the reasons that I believe compel me to consider both heart and mind while making decisions.

• Holistic and Authentic Decisions: I'm of the opinion that the integration of heart and mind leads to holistic and authentic decisions because of their comprehensiveness. The mind focuses on the logical and objective outcomes of the decision, while the heart represents our deep inspirations and emotions, which are seemingly subjective but have a definite place in making decisions.

• Creative Decisions: The logic, rationality, and critical thinking components of decision-making imposed by the mind must be supplemented by the innovations and inspiration stirred by the heart to make a decision creative. So, the consensus of the compassionate heart and critical mind over any point makes it creative.

• Satisfying Decisions: It is my personal experience that decisions taken by using the mind are critical with objective outcomes, while those taken by heart are emotionally sound and subjective. Neither of the two is satisfying individually, but when we combine both, it gives a sense of satisfaction.

• Courageous Decisions: The integration of mind and heart helps in making decisions that demand courage because the anticipated outcomes may sometimes be daunting. The mind helps to explore the outcomes based on past experience, while the heart is persuaded to make courageous decisions.

• Strengthening Social Bonds: Decisions taken by mind, welcomed with an emotional tinge of heart, result in strengthening social bonds because of the empathy and adhesiveness fostered by the decision.

It is important to emphasize that the integration of heart and mind may not always lead to foolproof decisions, but sometimes there may be pitfalls in decisions like:

• Biased Decisions: Both mind and heart are vulnerable to biases of their own kind, which may influence decision-making at their own level and when they are integrated. Cognitive bias of the mind can distort our thinking capacity and influence our decision-making, similarly, the emotional bias of heart can cloud over a critical thinking approach and may lead to ineffective decisions.

• Conflict and Indecision: It's quite possible that heart and mind may not vibrate in harmony as far as decision-making is concerned. It is possible that the influence of one of these may dominate over the other at any particular point and may lead to a state of conflict and indecision which needs a very careful approach to reconcile these conflicting thoughts to reach a logical conclusion.

• Overanalysis vs Impulsivity: Having mentioned earlier that mind believes in carrying out critical analysis and taking decisions that have objective outcomes, whereas the heart, full of emotions, may paralyze logical components and may lead to impulsive decisions. So, on one hand, mind leads to overanalysis and heart leads to impulsive decisions. Balancing both of these components is essential for fair decision-making.

• External Influence: Both our heart and mind are vulnerable to influence by external factors like peer pressure, societal norms, cultural practices, media propaganda, and social media trends. The external factors have the potential to alter our logical and critical thinking, which also trespasses on the emotional boundaries.

Are you an emotional or a practical person in real life?

As I introspect into my deeper self and recollect the decision-making times, I find myself oscillating between practicality and emotionality. Sometimes one, and at other times the other, dominate my decision-making power. However, I have always strived to keep myself balanced between the two.

In decisions that involve my professional conduct, I prioritize practicality over emotions, while in personal or family-related matters, I prioritize emotions over practicality. In professional life, we generally come across decisions that have a bearing on people outside personal relationships, and therefore, the scope of reversing or rectifying decisions is negligible, and thus critical and logical thinking comes into play as they are the heart of practicality in decision-making. In personal relationships, emotional factors like empathy, kindness, and social bonds are to be considered besides the analytical component of decision-making. So, emotionally does dominate; however, I try to make balanced decisions there too.

So, for me, the dichotomy of emotionality and practicality is hard to establish. Being a person of scientific temperament and someone who values relations, I always try to make balanced decisions without bias at a conscious level.

Do you have any suggestions for youth which one they should follow in their day-to-day lives?

I would suggest youth not to be rigid in decision-making and not to choose one over the other. Instead, they must be able to read the situations well and choose which way to shift. It is also important to mention that the ideal approach is to make a decision which is a blend of both or simply adopt a balanced approach. So, following are some suggestions to maintain balance:

• Self-Reflection: It is a technique to inculcate and nurture emotional intelligence in youth. I think self-reflection would help our youth to dive deep into their own selves and understand what their heart feels comfortable with and how they want to get treated. They should introspect what they expect decisions to be like which they are bound to follow. One would definitely like to be treated with empathy, kindness, and mutual respect etc. To inculcate such habits, youth should resort to meditation, yoga, journal writing, etc.

• Effective Communication: Youth must adopt effective communication skills to make informed decisions. It involves being a patient listener and an eloquent speaker. Youth must be taught to respect dissenting opinions and to not adopt a dichotomous approach. Before making any decision, youth must be taught to shun any preconceived notions to avoid falling prey to bias.

• Problem-solving Skills: Youth must be given opportunities to solve real-life issues and keenly follow the pros and cons of the decisions taken. They must be allowed to make rectifying decisions and come up with brainstorming solutions so that they adopt problem-solving skills in the long run and become good decision-makers.

• Seek Support: Youth must be taught the importance of gaining experience in life and the impact of experience on decision-making. They must be taught to seek support from experts and experienced people including parents, teachers, and good friends in difficult situations. So, this approach would remove an element of ego from them and make them humble beings that are always in learning mode.

• Neutral Approach: It's important for the youth to adopt a behavior where they are neutral to the situation. Neutrality fosters fair and balanced decision-making free of bias.

Conclusion

While navigating life, we come across various twists and turns where we have to take life changing decisions. We also take decison in our day-to-day life. In some cases, our heart dominate us while in others mind dominate us. Mind makes logical , critical and well thought out decisions while heart provide emotional support to the mind. The ideal approach must be a balanced one.