Chapter 109: Facts and Feelings

Humans make damn near all their decisions based on feelings. This seems normal but where things go awry is when those feelings are based on insufficient data, information and thoughtful meditative analysis and synthesis. 

The reason we use feelings is because feelings are easy, facts are complicated, they must be disputed and discussed and so on and then finally when the full story is known and understood we come to simplified conclusions that drive those feelings used to make decisions. 

•    First and foremost, don't trust feelings.

•    Second, let an objective analysis of facts and data feed your mind through a mindful logical way.

•    Third, discuss things with others who are taking the same steps toward a more logical understanding.

•    Fourth, all parties then ignore the results, and then base conclusions of how it all makes you feel. 

In order to make better and productive use of our emotions, feelings, we need to achieve emotional maturity through these processes. In short, fact check, gain as much knowledge and understanding of the subject/issue and then through logical analysis and synthesis come up with conclusions. Dismiss that, and let the mind to its natural thing using the emotional side of the brain to come to some conclusion for a decision.

Here is how that works, somewhat, we tend to trigger our emotional states from memories, those facts and data and experiences in life, and then we construct those current state of mind memories from the past encoded memories and the current experiences in short term memory of the now, the present moment. In this way we construct a piece of information from our feelings about all that compiled, collated and creative stuff and allow our emotional side to base a conclusion from that. To allow that from ignorance just feeds the monkey and we get nothing productive by the proverbial monkey dance. 

I quote:

Facts and numbers are important, but they can be misleading. Moreover, your own evaluation function, based on what you think is important to you, may be completely wrong.

1. feed your intuition all the relevant facts and numbers. But don’t believe what they are telling you.

2. don’t base your decision on the facts and figures alone.

3.make that decision based on feelings, but those feelings can be misguided if based only on partial information.

4.learned (and independently check what the news, etc. tells us), then we should re-evaluate our feelings.

5.Combining facts and feelings in a thoughtful way is essential in any important decision.