If I ask you whether good decision making is important, I know you'd probably say yes.

My favorite author Stephen Covey, who penned the famous 7 Habits, said: “We are the creative force of our life, through our own decisions rather than our conditions.”

What he means is that we're creating our life one decision at a time. To create an authentic, empowered life, we need to make authentic, empowered choices.

We create our life one decision at a time.

But this is easier said than done.

If you've ever stayed up at night thinking, "What should I do?", if you've ever wondered, "Should I follow my head or my heart?"; you know what I'm talking about.

As a coach, most clients come to me with a decision that they can't make. In my workshops, when I said "Raise your hands if you don't know what you want," most people would raise their hands.

I was like that too.

In my mid-twenty, I was living a life that looked good on the outside but felt bad on the inside.

I realized, for the first time, that I had made all my life decisions based on what my mind thought I wanted, not what I truly wanted.

I was following the “success script”, wondering: "Why am I not happy? Why do I keep having this nagging feeling that this life isn't mine?"

Now in retrospect, everything makes perfect sense. I was making decisions from the wrong places.

Neuroscience discovered that 80% of our thoughts are negative and fear-based.
Psychology has taught us that our mind is filled with beliefs that we subconsciously adopted between the time we are 0 to 7 years old. Most of those beliefs are false and limiting.

And since beliefs led to choices, I winded up in a limiting life.

(If you're a woman and convinced that eating goat meat will make you hairy, for example. You will say "no thanks" the next time someone serves you a delicious bite of Birria...)

When the great scholar and Sufi poet Rumi said, "Don't move the way fear makes you move," he basically told us to get the hell out of our minds.

This poses a question: Where do we go?

Here are two stories that can give you clues.

Limiting beliefs lead to a limiting life.

How I followed my mind into a nightmare

Back then, after realizing how I had been moved by fear all along, I dropped everything, started a soul-searching period, hoping to find my real calling.

One of my first lessons presents itself in the form of a government project. I would lead a project to empower women in rural areas of Vietnam. The project was funded by a prestigious EU organization, and I seemed to be a perfect fit for the job.

The opportunity looked great on paper, but for some reason, during the first meeting with the person in charge, I noticed a contracting, shrinking sensation in my body.

But my mind was thrilled by the prospect:

"Your parents would be proud. This project sounds so important. And look at the big funding!"

So I ignored my body and got on board.

What unfolded after was an absolute nightmare.

I remember one boardroom meeting where I felt a repulsion rising up from my trunk up to my neck. I looked around and realized that I was in the middle of a group of people whose values were completely different from mine.

Things got so bad that I eventually made up some excuses to get out of the project.

How Megan listened to her body and found magic

I had the pleasure of coaching a lovely young woman, whose name I'd called Megan. Long wavy hair, bright eyes, Megan was both intelligent and beautiful.

However, for many months, her long term relationship had been in limbo. Her partner wanted the relationship to grow into a new stage. But that made her panic.

Her mind kept telling her a horror marriage story:

"This is a prison! You will be stuck in a cage. The two of you will have to put up with each other. It will end in misery."

I told her to imagine putting that story in another room.

I guided her to calm her breath, ease her body, and immerse herself in the decision of letting the relationship grow into the next stage:

"Let go of overthinking. Feel into this decision. Notice your body. How does it feel?", I asked

To her own surprise, she noticed the body felt peaceful, the chest felt open, and in her trunk, she felt a gentle sense of expansion.

"So what is your decision," I asked.

"I will go ahead and let my relationship grow," she said.

Beautiful things unfolded.

That decision allowed her to face her fear, release old wounds, and shift the limiting beliefs about love that she subconsciously adopted as a child.

Now she shines when she talks about her relationship. She has grown not only as a life partner but also as a woman.

Your body is much more intelligent than you think.

It's not silly, it's science.

Later Megan told me that making a big decision following what her body says makes her feel a bit silly.

In fact, it isn't silly. It's scientific.

We're used to seeing the body as a beauty device or a Grab taxi that takes our brain to meetings.

However, research suggests that our body is much much more intelligent than our analytical mind.

The verbal region of our brain (which we use when we make pros and cons list) processes about 40 bits of information per second. The nonverbal part of our brain (which speaks to us through body sensation) processes about 11,000,000 bits per second. Yes, that's forty vs. eleven million.

In recent years, neuroscientists have discovered that the heart has its own independent nervous system - as complex as the brain of a cat. The signals sent from the heart affect many areas and functions of the brain. More intriguing, it appeared in research that the heart brain sends messages which the head brain not only understood but obeyed.

You might be surprised to find out that your gut has its own brain. Called the enteric nervous system (ENS), our gut-brain contains more than 100 million nerve cells - as many nerve cells as in our spinal cord. Similarly to the heart brain, our gut-brain communicates back and forth with our head brain.

My favorite person and coach in the world Martha Beck wrote in her latest book:

"To navigate the wild world, you need to move your basic perceptual and analytical thinking out of your head and into the whole inner space of the body."

I bet now you’re asking yourself a different question: But how?

To move beyond the 40-bit processing power, here are 4 tips to get you started:

1/ Learn your body's language.

The body speaks not in your mother tongue or klingonian. It speaks to you in physical sensations.

Unfortunately, we live so much in our heads that we become oblivious to what's happening in our bodies. I've coached doctors and Ph.D. candidates who had no idea how their big toes felt like.

To get out of your mind and get into your body, any activity that forces you to pay attention to your body will help. From taking a walk to doing yoga, or simply closing your eyes for a few seconds to notice the sensations in your big toe.

If there are 3 doors in front of you, choose the door where fear is standing guard. For behind it, you will find treasure
much more precious jewel. You will find a daring adventure.

2/ Understand the distinction between Expansion and Contraction

The body responds to decisions that are aligned with your purpose with expansive sensations.

This is when you feel as if your body is expanding. The chest feels open; the body feels light; an aliveness rising up in your trunk and limbs.

On the contrary, the body responds to decisions that are not aligned with your purpose with contracting sensations.

Here’s when the body becomes contracted. You may notice a shrinking sensation, a feeling of shutting down as if the life force is being drained from you.

But there’s a catch.

To get an accurate body response, you need to unhook yourself from the mind's limiting stories, fears, and doubts. You can imagine putting them in another room, for example. Otherwise, they may hijack your emotions and send your body into a panic.

If your body is your compass, the limiting thoughts can be like the odd magnetic fields that make the compass's pointer (and your life) go south instead of heading True North.

3/ Know the difference between a Fear Response and a Yuck! Response

If instead of overthinking about, you feel into an option and notice a Yuck! Response (like when you ate something gross). This means that your entire system finds this path toxic. Thus it's telling you to throw this option into the trash bin and use some hand sanitizer.

However, I get this question all the time:

"I experience fear when I think about following this path. Does this mean it's not right for me?"

If what you mean when you say "this path" is a small alley in a drug-dealing neighborhood in the middle of the night, then yes, that path is not right for you.

Other than that, a Fear Response means this path will take you out of your comfort zone into what I call the Magic Zone. And yes, this is where you want to be.

Fear is the guard of the jewel. It's what's standing at the door to your best destiny. (Think of Fluffy the three-headed dog in Harry Potter!)

If there are 3 doors in front of you, choose the door where fear is standing guard. For behind it, you will find treasure much more precious than the Philosopher's Stone - you will find a daring adventure.

"Life is either a daring adventure or nothing." said Helen Keller

The only bad decisions are the ones you don't make.

4/ Dare to Decide

This is what I learned from my coach Beverly Barnes. Deciding is a courageous act.

And even though we talked about making "the right" decision in this article, I don't believe there is such a thing as a bad decision.

Whatever you choose will lead you precisely to the lesson you need. The only bad decisions are the ones you don't make.

Finally, you can decide to give yourself more time to decide. Sometimes your body needs time to gather more data or to finish processing them.

But hey, do not use this to indulge in indecision because when this is the case, your body will know.

NOW I WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU:

What is one decision you're having a hard time making? What does your body tell you? Expansion or Contraction? Fear or Yuck? Dare to Decide Now!

Write your answer to the comment below. Or share it in the Shine Your Light Sisterhood to inspire others and get support on the journey.

Remember: you are a beautiful miracle, and you can truly shine your light.

With so much love,

Milena xo

P.S: On the topic of fear, check out this fun article where I share a fear-embracing technique to live true to who you are.

Follow Your Body: Moving Beyond Logic to Magic

We create our life one decision at a time.