56: Getting out of confusion and making a quality decision

Let's look at what confusion actually is because the thing about confusion is it is not a thinking or information problem.

I get it can totally feel like one and It can feel like what we just need is more information or more time or to ask the right person to help you talk it through.

But confusion is not an information problem.

Confusion is a protection strategy.

Your brain creates this protection to stop you from having to feel something really, really uncomfortable in yourself.

So instead of feeling those feelings that are just awful to feel, your brain goes into thinking mode.

So when you're caught between two options and you just can't decide or you just don't know what is right for you, Your brain doesn't go into kind of some rational place to get more information to help you pick one.

It just thinks on it.

It sends you off to Google to do some Googling.

It sends you to your best friend to talk it through to the ends of the earth or to a family member.

And it keeps asking you, but what if? And then there's the other siding of the argument that it goes backwards and forwards, flipping and flopping.

And your brain is actually doing a really good thing.

It is not doing this to try and intentionally be unhelpful.

It's doing it because it's trying to keep you safe from the very real discomfort of making an actual decision.

So we're going to go through all of this.

But I just want to say, do you know, have you heard of the term Do you know what an earworm is? It's when a song gets stuck in your brain and it plays on repeat without your permission.

And confusion is basically the same thing.

Your brain just keeps returning to it, not because it's getting any closer to an answer.

but because your brain hasn't got a way to get out of it it needs a structured way to stop it just going backwards and forwards and flipping flopping and just trying to get more and more information and that is not to say there isn't a real place for getting a piece of paper and writing down the pros and cons of of your decision and trying getting some more information But that, doing that doesn't feel like confusion.

That feels like, okay, let me do some research on this before I make the decision.

So we're really talking about this kind of flipping, flopping, can't make a decision confusion experience.

So this tool that we're going to go through gives your brain a way out of that confusion.