Does Mindfulness Improve Decision Making?
Does mindfulness improve decision making?
The intuitive answer is yes. Mindfulness leaves us less reactive, more present, less afraid, more focused. All of that points toward better choices.
This idea also happens to hold up in the research. Studies have found that even brief mindfulness practice lowers emotional reactivity and strengthens self-control, and that people who practice tend to make steadier, less impulsive choices, including more ethical ones.
Why is this? We often make our worst calls while in a state of upset, while we are rushed, or irritated, or afraid of looking uncertain in front of the room. A reactive mind reaches for whatever ends its own discomfort fastest. In many cases that may not be the best decision.
We like to imagine that judgment is mostly a matter of intelligence. More often it is a matter of what is happening in us at the moment we choose. Presence opens a small gap between the feeling and the response. Most good decisions live inside that gap.
A few moments of deep breathing before you make a decision is often enough to clarify your mind. Next time you face a decision large or small, take a moment to sit, enter a mindful state, and only then choose which path to take.
Until next time, Sherif