EASY DECISIONS FROM YOUR BEST SELF

use all 3 centers of intelligence to find your relaxed & open way
of being & seeing & DECIDING

Photo of person in the dark gazing at string lights glowing in their hands from Xuan Nguyen on Unsplash

​I want to invite you out of that furrowed-brow, overthinking thing and point you to what could feel & work better. You’ll need a willingness to trust yourself more, and also to trust life.

What if you began by committing to EASE around any decision you need to make? Ease in body, heart, and head—your three centers of intelligence. Each lets you know whether you’re on- or off-track for good decision making, and so … whether to LEAVE IT ALONE right now or jump in & run with it—or even dreamily push the pieces around.

Let’s walk together through all three centers.

Body: LOOK AWAY FROM THE TOPIC when you’re …

• tense
• moving with jerky, annoyed gestures,
• feeling heavy & ponderous
• noticing anything scrunched up in your face
• having that deflated feeling, the wind knocked out of you
• experiencing any of those physical sensations you have when you don’t like yourself or people or life

In those moments, don’t think about it at all, never mind try to move the decision forward. Seriously. Literally walk away if you need to, and go make your body feel better. Start with a drink of clean water.

It’s a great time to come back to the topic when you’re …

• relaxed
• feeling good & at ease inside your own body
• moving consciously & fluidly
• breathing well
• noticing lovely information your 5 senses (or however many you’ve got) are bringing in
• experiencing spacious, open, lightness of being

Now go! Go ahead & come close to this thing you’re considering. See what wants to be dreamed up, learned, discovered, invented, and maybe fully decided!

Heart: DON’T EVEN GO NEAR THE TOPIC, never mind try to make the decision, when you’re …

• frustrated
• worried, anxious
• feeling bad about yourself
• sad about your past
• grabbed by fear about what you think you’ve decided badly before
• scared or preemptively sorry about your future
• hurting about what’s painful in life

In your bad feeling states, shift your physical & mental gaze toward what makes you feel better. In fact, just go take care of your heart. Don’t analyze or think about your feelings. Breathe them, soften them, soothe them, carry them around kindly. Take your feelings with you as you go back to the body and do something that will move your limbs & energies and get the blood & breath flowing again.

When do you go back into the stuff of your decision? When you feel

• at peace
• happy, joyful
• satisfied, content
• hopeful, expansive, optimistic
• warm toward self, others, life
• downright pleased with yourself
• worthy, lovable, gazed upon by love
• fully in love

All or any of this means you’re ready to dream into your vision again or dive back into the specifics & details of what needs to be known so that the decision can come to you without strain & forcing, never mind agonizing.

Head: Screech decision making to a halt when you’re

• ruminating
• repeating yourself, with the negative thoughts echoing menacingly
• reviewing all the reasons you probably have to scale something down, settle, give up, etc.
• going into some version of what you don’t deserve or don’t get to have
• comparing yourself to what others have or get to do
• reviewing the past to find evidence about what’s wrong with you
• fixating on whatever’s going on in your life that isn’t to your liking (current conditions that tell you lies about your prospects for the future, but you fool yourself into thinking you’re being level-headed & realistic by giving those your increasingly unclear attention)

I mean it. INTERRUPT ALL THOUGHT when that’s the vibe in your headspace. The sooner, the better—before it builds momentum. Get out of your head, please. Back to the body, back to the heart. Take note, in fact, that your body & heart are feeling bad as they sync with those thoughts. Now, go after what makes them feel better. Abandon thinking altogether until you can reach for thoughts that go with a relaxed body and soothed heart.

You’ll know you’re ready to bring focus back to the topic when

• the mind is clear of old ideas or beliefs
• you can look up at the sky and feel that large, beautiful expanse inside yourself
• you’re having thoughts about what’s possible, what works, what supports you
• the limiting & mean things you say to yourself are distant & harmless or nowhere in the vicinity
• you feel pretty good about where you’ve been & where you are
• you aim to go where you actually want to be (will & intention harnessed!)
• you can bring it to now and just find the next step that feels right—with no idea of having to figure or map the whole thing out
• you’re out of right-wrong and know that there is no perfect, right way to do it, just the next gorgeous experiment to run

Now, let your imagination run, do the research, make the phone calls & visits, have the conversations, and make little or large choices that move you toward that readiness to decide—or plunk you right in a decision that you notice kind of made itself. (Byron Katie taught me that decisions make themselves, and I keep finding that when I’m tending my state through my 3 centers, they do just that.)

Hey, when you’re in a good place in body-heart-head, I invite you to notice the magic. Are you …

• bumping into people who light you up
• noticing new things that inspire you as they drop into your field or lap
• coming upon the new, unexpected related idea
• feeling the flow of uncanny right timing???

Notice the magic. It will get you where you’re going. (And, um, it’s not magic at all. It’s the way things work when you’re clear & open. You know.)

Love & blessings, Jaya