Why does one experience indecisiveness and uncertainty, and how do you know you're making the wisest decision? Why is it that you procrastinate, hesitate, and frustrate on a decision, and hold yourself back from taking action? Join Dr Demartini for an indepth look into the decision making process, how uncertainties emerge, and how you can increase the probability and speed at making wise decisions.

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A lot of our subjective biases are coming from our confusions and internal

conflicts between what's truly valuable to us and what we've injected from other

people about how to fit in.

Sometimes we're confronted by very challenging situations and we

don't know which way to turn.

And so I'd like to discuss how to make a decision or how to make a wiser

decision, wisest decision. So if you have something write with and write on,

I would advise you to do it, might be worth just grabbing a note or two.

So

first let's just outline the brain here for a second.

You have a more advanced part of the brain,

and a less advanced part of the brain, if you will. One for thrival,

one for survival.

The one for survival is called systems 1 thinking sometimes,

and it's basically the area of the brain,

subcortical area of the brain called the amygdala.

You also have an advanced part of the brain, not the lower amygdala,

which is called the desire center, but the executive center,

where you think more logically and more rationally and it's the forebrain

area. It's systems 2.

Systems 1 is fast for emergencies, for survival,

to catch prey, to avoid predator.

Systems 2 is to logically think things out and plan things and execute plans.

That's why it's called the executive center.

When we're confronted with decision making,

based on our perceptions of what's happening around us,

and the objective that we have, or goal that we have,

or fantasy that we're seeking,

we will use one or that whole sequence of areas.

We'll either use the amygdala or we'll use the executive center or a combination

of the two. And there's a gradation, it's graded like a dimmer switch.

Most decisions involve a little of all that.

But if you're in a situation where you feel,

you perceive something highly polarized,

where you perceive way more advantages than disadvantages,

or way more disadvantages than advantages,

you'll use systems 1 thinking and immediately react and

one thing, disadvantages, and seek the other.

Almost every decision we make is based on what we believe will give us the

greatest advantage over disadvantage, greatest benefit over drawback.

But once we do that,

we sometimes discover that our initial reaction didn't quite capture

all the possible responses and repercussions,

consequences that we face once we make that decision.

So what happens is it's just like people investing in something when everybody

else is investing in it, the herd instinct, go and invest in it quickly,

and then we realize we bought at the top of the market and it crashes.

So systems 1 thinking is designed for subjective biases,

false attribution biases where they,

we exaggerate things on the outside, positively or negatively.

And it's there because we want to capture prey that we think has got more

advantage than disadvantage, we want to consume it,

eat it and get our adrenaline going to capture it.

Or we want get away from the predator and run like heck from the predator and

escape it. So we create what is called false positives

that we perceive something that's there that's not,

and false negative's not perceiving something that is.

So when you see something that you seek and you think has more advantage than

disadvantage,

the amygdala distorts what's going on in order to get the adrenaline going in

order to capture it. And so you're impulsive,

capturing and seeking it,

and you get the adrenaline going to run quickly to capture it.

And you're impulsively,

immediate gratifying that thing that you label more advantage than disadvantage.

When you're infatuated with somebody you're conscious of the upsides,

unconscious of the downsides, you see more advantage than disadvantage.

So you have an impulse to quickly grab it, do what you can to capture that.

But on the other hand,

when you're resentful to something which represents a predator to you,

and you're conscious of the downsides unconscious of the upsides,

that same amygdala with its subjective bias,

now creates a false positive that there's more negatives than positives,

and a false negative negating the positives on it.

And we skew with the subjective bias, our perceptions of reality.

And we impulsively seek or instinctfully avoid

things from the amygdala.

And we make quick decisions. Boy, grab it, get out of there.

But we then deal with the consequences later because we oversighted the two

sides that's in every experience. There are no one sided events.

I learned from a great CEO of a very big company in America,

financial company, I asked him,

how does he make the right decision? And he says, I don't.

I make a decision and then I turn around and make it right. I thought, wow,

that's a new frame, hadn't thought of it that way. He said,

because every decision you make has got a birth of pair of opposites.

There'll be advantages and disadvantages.

So what I do is I find out what the advantages are,

I find out what the disadvantages and I try to mitigate the risks on the

disadvantages and prepare for what's going to happen. So I can have certainty.

One thing you will always have is certainty that there'll be two sides.

You know, you get in a relationship and you're infatuated at first,

and you think, okay,

this is going to give me a 51% more positives than negatives,

and then you go in there and you go, oh, I overlooked that,

didn't see that coming. And then you find out there's a balance.

There is no such thing as a one-sided person. In fact,

if you were to go up to somebody and said, you're always positive,

never negative, always kind, never cruel,

their and your BS meter would go off and go, no, no, no, no,

I've got both sides.

So when you're making an impulsive decision,

you are overlooking things with a subjective bias,

and you have a confirmation bias on the positives,

a n disconfirmation bias on the negatives,

a false positive on the positives and a false negative on the negatives,

and you skew it and you've made the decision quickly, but it's impulsive.

It's an immediate gratifying, impulsive decision that you think, oh my God.

And you will eventually, days, weeks, months, or years find out that there's,

oops, there's things I didn't see.

I bought that house impulsively and now I got all this crazy that I've got to

deal with this house.

Managing the house and security systems and landscaping and cleaning

and you know, termites and who knows what, costs.

And then you go, oops, I overlooked those things. Now,

then you discover over time, through hindsight, ooh, I didn't see that.

So you can make a very quick decision that you feel quite "certain" about,

even though it's really not certainty, it's just an impulse,

and you can make an action and then you bit by it, and you realize, oops.

At first you may justify it and be proud with the addiction of your pride

thinking, oh, I made the right decision and you brag about it.

And then later when you find out the other side, you keep quiet about it.

And that can also occur getting out of things.

You got away from something you went Ooh, like that. And you think, Ooh,

and you confused intuition with gut instinct.

Gut instinct is an assumption and causes a reaction in the gut

from the gut brain of avoiding something that's predator, quick, snake,

spider, or anybody that's, Ugh, I don't want to be around that person.

Anything that you have subjectively biased and stored in your subconscious mind.

Now, all of the experiences in your life that you ever judged,

that you saw imbalanced in your perspective is stored

and reverberates around in the brain as noise that is surfacing and

is initiating reactions of impulses towards and instincts away from things

without you even realizing it, you think you made a decision,

but actually you fired off responses in your body and moved before you

actually rationally thought about it. So it wasn't even a decision.

It was an automaton reacting to subconsciously stored

are associated and remind you of that make you react.

And you did something quick and you thought you made the right decision,

but you eventually discovered that there's two sides to things.

There's a kind of a bell distribution curve,

a mean distribution of consequences in life.

There's always advantages and disadvantages and rewards

anything you're going to deal with.

And so you are never going to have certainty when you impulsively or

instinctfully seek or avoid.

You're going to have what you think is certainty because you did it quickly,

but you actually overlooked information because of the biases,

the subjective biases.

And therefore there's a systems 2 thinking in a little bit higher area of the

brain. Amygdala is the subcortical area of the brain, still in the forebrain,

but it's in the subcortical area of the brain, but you have an executive center,

the medial prefrontal cortex,

and this area of the brain is involved in more of a

rationale, more of a logical thinking.

And it anticipates, it's more objective.

Objectivity means more neutral and balanced in thinking.

Subjectivity means biased, partial, incomplete awareness,

polarized thinking. But when you're more objective and you're more rational,

you're going to see both sides. The truth is there are going to be both sides.

You get in a relationship, there are going to be things you like and dislike,

and then you don't see it at first because you're infatuated.

But once you get to know them, you discover it.

And so you will never have certainty if you're pursuing a fantasy,

you'll never have certainty if you're pursuing something you thinks going to

give you more advantage than disadvantage initially,

without taking the time to balance out the sheet and prepare

for what's going to happen and mitigate the risk and use it to your advantage.

And the executive center is designed,

systems 2 thinking is designed to help you transform immediate

gratifying fantasies that you think's going to give you all positives without

negatives, like a fatal attraction,

Michael Douglas and Glenn Close in the movie, and then discover, Ooh boy,

look at the downside, completely overlooked that with my passion.

Passion means to suffer. The etymology comes from pati or passio,

which means to suffer.

So the impulse of passions will guarantee that even though you think you were

certain about your decision, like buying cryptocurrencies or something,

or buying an immediate speculation on some investment system,

and that's because you saw positives without negatives or saw negatives without

positives and sought or avoided. But the executive center,

the purpose of the executive center is to mitigate the risk that you're

overlooking, when you're making quote, a decision.

The executive center sends nerve fibers down into the amygdala,

the subcortical area,

and calms down the impulses and instincts and puts the dimmer switch on

and balances it. Takes it from extremes, which is for survival,

and puts it into something thrival oriented,

and allows you to see both sides and ask question, what are the downsides?

If you see something that's got an upside without a downside, you're blind,

you see something's got a downside and on upside, you're blind.

I've been teaching the Breakthrough Experience, my

and I've demonstrated by a hundred thousand people

that there is no one sided event.

And anybody who lives in the illusion they're going to get a one sided event,

they're going to label something with absolute good or bad,

positive or negative, are fooled. And it's a very narrow minded,

and you have to really narrow down the context to put your mind into something

like that.

Those will eventually lead to moral hypocrisies and things that are

unsustainable and unfulfillable.

That's why I don't recommend making decisions from that amygdala response

because you're blind. You're, it's there for survival. You know,

if a car's about to hit you get the heck out of there, but not for daily,

the normal decision, 99% of your life is not a car hitting you.

99% of your life is life, and occasionally have a real threat,

but your brain is so used to those threat responses,

it uses that part of the brain because of misperceptions,

primarily because of the false education we got. Paul Dirac,

the Nobel prize winner said, it's not that we don't know so much,

we know so much that it isn't so.

We're falsely taught about moral constructs about this is good,

and this is bad and we get subconsciously stored and we infiltrate

and subordinate to the herd's mentality of what it is. And as you know,

the herd on general, doesn't become the Nobel prize winners,

doesn't become the Olympic medalist,

doesn't become the great financers or wealth people,

they don't become the great Olympic medalist.

So if you're injecting the values of the herd,

and you're basically fitting in with tradition and convention and mores of

society,

the moral hypocrisies is that people then trying to project on you and you fit

into that,

your data that you're picking up to make decisions by is automatically skewed.

And you're doing that because you think that's going to give you more advantage

because if the majority of them do it well, it must be right.

But if the majority was doing that,

that's a little odd because 99% of the world's population is poor.

not financial independent and 99% of the population isn't the Nobel

prize winner or great Olympic medalist or the great real exceeders in life.

So if you go and follow that pathway and fit into the group,

instead of going into your executive center, be authentic,

living by your own highest value. See, you have a set of priorities in life,

set of values in life. Whenever you're doing something high in priority,

the blood, glucose, and oxygen goes into the forebrain, the executive center,

and not the hindbrain, not the subcortical amygdala.

So in the process of doing that,

you're more likely to make an objective decision and more likely to not react.

And when you do, you can have certainty, there'll be two sides.

You'll never have certainty in the idea of a one sided outcome,

not going to happen.

That's just the opposite of what you're probably thinking and expecting and

probably told by people. There is no black and white out there.

When somebody tries to shove down your throat,

that's good and it's all good and there's no bad in it or all bad and no good in

it, just know that that's an illusion. That's like labeling people.

That's a racial bias interpretation of reality. No,

there's a human being and everybody's got two sides to it and there's something

you can like in almost anybody and something you

if you look carefully enough, if you look in all areas.

When we're making decisions, we're affecting all areas. Our spiritual quest,

our intellectual pursuits, our business, our finance, our family,

our social and physical.

And somebody you may dislike in one area has something you like in another area.

If you look carefully and honestly look at all of them,

you'll find there's something always to look up to and down on on just about

anybody.

And that's because we project our values and whatever we judge in others it's

because it's just part of ourselves that we're either admiring or despising,

but we're buried inside and too humble or too proud to admit we have it.

And we project it onto them and we interpret it in our

judgements of ourself and not even realizing.

So therefore we're skewing our decisions,

particularly when we're in our amygdala.

And we're then listening to people by our judgments and putting people on

pedestals or pits and being misled.

We're false attribution bias oriented people,

where we think that the world out there is a hero or a villain,

absolutely good or bad,

skewing the heck out of our real quality action steps.

What's interesting is when we showed both sides,

I've been taking people through the Breakthrough Experience seminar 33,

almost 34 years, 33 and a half years,

and I've seen people actually go in there and do the inventory and completely

balance the scales on what they perceive in somebody.

And then they act, wisely,

with their heart, and knowing full well there's going to be both sides,

have certainty about both sides and have certainty to make an action

that's wise not a reaction that's foolish because of incomplete awareness.

Whenever we live by our highest values, we're more authentic,

our identity revolves around it,

and we're not as subject to listening to other people and

injecting the values of other people and confusing ourselves.

A lot of our subjective biases are coming from our confusions and internal

conflicts between what's truly valuable to us and what we've injected from other

people about how to fit in. And we fear being rejected.

So we confuse and cloud ourselves.

So we subjectively bias the interpretation of reality,

think we're making a decision and then finding out afterwards and then beating

ourselves up. 'I can't believe we were so blind.'

But if we live by priority and do the highest priority things

and make spontaneously inspired actions,

with objectivity from the forebrain, the executive center,

and mitigate the risk, the forebrain is involved in strategic planning,

seeing an inspired vision, executing the action steps towards it,

mitigating the risk,

calming down the impulses and governing yourself from the impulses and

instincts, which help you, you know, make immediate reactions,

but not necessarily wise decisions, and then all of a sudden,

you act spontaneously because you're inspired and you're fully aware of both

sides and prepared for both sides. That's a true objective. That's a Stoics,

Marcus Aurelias's approach to balancing it.

Look at all the downsides when you're,

when you think there's going to be more advantages,

what are they downsides of it? Make sure that those are balanced.

And then as a result of it, you'll think, well, I can't act and I can't react,

I'm indifferent. No, go further,

go all the way and balance it and find out the benefits of the downsides and

find both sides of it. And then your heart will tell you which is to act.

Most people don't know how to act from the heart.

In the Breakthrough Experience I show people how to act from the heart.

And what's interesting is they're always wanting to make a decision out of a

judgment, which is a disempowered state versus acting out of their heart,

which is an empowered state, inspired with full awareness, mindfulness,

knowing both sides, knowing there's going to be advantages and disadvantages,

just like,

imagine you're getting into a relationship and you think it's going to get

positive without negatives and then you find out it's got both. Well,

you don't have to wait for the wisdom of the ages with the aging process to

figure that out, you can go and have the wisdom of the ages without it,

by just looking for both sides and seeing it .

I was going out on a date with a girl one time,

and I made a list of all of my things that have been advantages and

disadvantages, according to what people have said. And I said, by the way,

in case you have a fantasy about who I am,

here's a list of the downsides that I'm bringing to the table.

Just want to get that off the table on day one here. They think, well,

that's not very romantic. Well, great.

Why get involved in a highly romantic passion and find out, oh,

and then have this calamity out of it,

when you can go in there and just be yourself?

You want to be loved and appreciated for who you are.

If you're not willing to put it on the table and show both sides and you have

both sides,

you're going to end up having to find out the hard way in relationships.

And many people are wanting the little pleasure side of it,

but they don't want to take the downside, but they come with both sides,

all relationships, all goals, all objectives in life, have both sides.

And a true master is the one who embraces both sides,

prepared for both sides and mitigates the so-called risks and

calms down the so-called rewards.

Because sometimes you get blinded by what you think is a reward and find out,

oh, I didn't see something there.

And sometimes you don't see the opportunities and

risks. We grow maximum at the border of support and challenge,

ease and difficulty, positive negative, pleasure, and pain.

That's why we have both in life.

And so a real action embraces both.

You cannot have certainty searching for a one sided world.

I always say depression is a comparison of your current reality to a fantasy

you're addicted to,

this one sided mono-poled idea about how life's supposed to be.

The most depressed people I know are the people that are looking for fantasies

and happiness all the time. When people embrace both sides of life,

they're grounded, and they get what they're, what they expect is what's real.

And when your will matches that,

and you're now graceful for that and grateful for both sides,

now you have an action out of love.

And then you can have certainty, because that's what you can be certain about.

You know, the stock market goes up, the stock market goes down,

but overall it follows a path, and it's called the mean,

the average fluctuation of all the ups and downs. When it goes up,

you made money on the past. When it goes down, you made money on the future.

And if you understand when it's, what the mean is, and know what the mean is,

then you can expect the mean.

If you expect only the ups and then you get blinded by them,

you'll go down and then you go, oh my God, I didn't see it coming.

And if it goes down,

you don't see the benefits because you're buying cheap and then you get more

value out of it. But if you understand the mean and expect the mean,

and you set that as a goal and an objective, over time, historically,

you get the mean. And so in life,

if you have an expectation of both sides, you get both sides,

you're prepared for both sides, you love both sides and you grow.

And then you act out of wisdom and you have certainty about your action because

that you can be certain about, there's just going to be two sides.

Look back at any relationship you've had,

I assure you there's been things you like and dislike,

advantage and disadvantage, risk and rewards. Every relationship has it.

If you thought there's going to be more one or the other,

you're going to end up getting bit, oh,

you might justify in your head in order to justify why you've had a relationship

for long that there's more advantages,

and there is in your mind because you're feeling appreciation and love.

But there's also things that little quirky things that you have to deal with

each person, peccadillos that you have to deal with with everyone.

So if you want to make a wise decision with certainty,

set an objective,

and that only comes from your executive center and only comes when you're really

living by what's valuable to you. See, the way our hierarchy values are in life.

When we are living in our highest values and living by priority and prioritizing

our day, that area of the brain is where we get the most information,

so we got the most balanced information prepared for things,

so we're not fooled. But when we live by lower values,

our blood, glucose,

and oxygen goes in the amygdala and that's an impulsive center and instinctual

center,

and we're deeply going to be subjectively biased in our interpretation of

reality. And that's necessary as a survival mechanism,

but not for most daily thrival. Your intuition,

many people confuse intuition with instinct, gut instinct.

Your gut instinct is trying to help you avoid something you have perceived from

previous subconsciously stored data, something to avoid,

epigenetically or in this life. And or,

your intuition is trying to balance those and bring you to see both sides of

things. It's just the opposite of instinct.

And the gut instinct is down in the gut, but the intuition is not in the gut.

It's actually in the,

it's trying to lead you to balance the equation to open your heart.

Your intuition and inspiration.

Your intuition is trying to balance the equation so you can see both sides in a

perfectly balanced manner.

And the moment you see both sides and you have a synthesis and synchronicity of

both sides, you have inspiration.

And then you spontaneously act with inspiration, prepared with planning,

with foresight, both sides. And now you can be certain because you're prepared.

Because that's what you're going to get. You have,

if you look at any consequence of anything you do,

you're going to find out that we don't know the consequences,

but over time eventually there's going to be advantage and disadvantage to

everything you ever do. And there's a mean distribution,

the greater the sample size,

the more palpable the mean distribution of benefits and drawbacks.

So if you were really narrow minded with a little sample size,

you've got very little experience, you're going to be impulsive and instinctual,

you're going to be avoiding and seeking.

You're going to be surviving instead of thriving.

But if you actually have a greater sample size,

which is called the accumulation of wisdom in your life,

you'll make wise decisions with certainty because now you've set a real

objective in life instead of a subjective bias.

So I'm a firm believer in taking the time to go after what you really love in

life, and what's really priority in your life. And that's the key,

because if you're not, you'll be a visionary if you do,

you'll see things in advance, you'll prepare things.

In the Breakthrough Experience program that I teach I'm teaching people how to

first, identify what their values are, how to prioritize their life,

how to set real objectives, how to have more certainty in life,

be more present in life, have more gratitude, love, inspiration,

enthusiasm in life.

I also teaching them how to transcend the amygdala's response,

unless it's really needed. There are times, when a car's about to hit you,

jump out the way of the car,

but 99% of your life is not jumping out of a car or running away from a lion

or something.

And it's really an exaggeration of pleasures and pains

And our IQ and our EQ, our intelligent quotient,

our emotional quotient is based on how well we listen to the executive center,

not the amygdala. The amygdala is where we have the lowest IQ,

the lowest abstract understanding, and we have the most emotional reactions,

we have no governance. The executive center governs the amygdala.

It calms it down.

It uses glutamate and GABA and N-Acetylaspartate as

transmitters to regulate them and put the dimmer switch on it and coordinate it.

The very part of front part of our brain actually calms down spastic responses

and impulses and instincts,

and puts intuition in to put the dimmer switch on to get you inspired.

So that's why in the Breakthrough Experience, I

and organize and teach them how to do the Demartini Method,

which is a science on how to go from the amygdala into the executive center and

how to go from the impulsive and instinctual systems

visionary, more objective planned life, living by design,

not living by duty and reactions.

So I know that what I said is going to be if you mull it over and listen to

this, maybe more than once, it has value,

because you can sit there and have a fatal attraction or you can have a real

inspired life in life that's based on how you want to act.

I'm not interested in making immediate gratifying decision.

I'm interested in making a long term action step that's helps me,

prioritized action steps to help me get my objectives.

So your executive center turns fantasies through goals, into objectives,

that are obtainable, so you can have certainty about the outcome.

So that's why I want people to come to the Breakthrough Experience.

So you can master your mind and master your life with all the tools that I'm

going to give. It actually says seven personal tools here,

but there's way more than seven,

and join me there so I can help you make wise spontaneous actions

out of your heart and do something you love in life and love what you do with

the people you'd love to be and do with, and watch the decisions.

Less anxiety and less depression, less frustration, less aggravation,

way more gratitude in life, inspiration in life,

love in life and more presence and certainty in life.

So again, the title, how to know if you are making a wise decision,

that's it. If you're having to ask the question whether it is, it's not,

because if it is the wisest decision, you'll know both sides,

you won't be anxious about it. Then there's no question.

Questions are polarized states, when you know with certainty,

there's no polarity. So until next week, this is Dr. Demartini,

letting you know that it really makes a difference if you come to the

Breakthrough Experience,

let me help you go do something extraordinary with

next week for our next presentation. Thank you. And enjoy