The third post toward making better, stronger decisions is here.  Without pause, my third nudge has to do with feelings.

Feel the consequences before you choose them. 

It’s extremely helpful to pay attention to your gut, to the seat of your emotions.  Some people resonate with the language of the heart.  So, whether you call it your gut, your heart, or your feelings, the idea is that you connect with them. 

How does it feel for you to get option A?  Does option B make your stomach turn?  This part of choosing isn’t on the analytical side.  It’s framed by the analytical side and might be inseparable from it, but it moves downward.  Maybe the decision is completely out of your head and down in your feet.

I realize that this is almost entirely hypothetical.  It may be next to impossible.  But you may be surprised.  If you dig or sit down long enough, maybe your feelings will expose themselves.  Would choosing one way make you feel worse or better?  Can those feelings be a part of the tools that help you make a better, wiser decision? 

I’ve noticed that my feelings sit in my stomach.  When I’m stressed or angry or agitated, my stomach lets me know.  I may lose my appetite.  I may increase my appetite.  I may eat and not notice taste.  I may feel flipping and hear rumbling more than normal.  I may feel what my acupuncturist calls heat when my energy gets confused and doesn’t know how to fall down and, instead, moves upward.  But my stomach speaks and my job is to feel and to listen.

Maybe that is feeling the first response you had when you considered your options.  The nagging feeling that sunk your spirit.  The headache flashing when you spent five minutes writing pros and cons.  Joy rising up as you talked to a friend about some goal you set.  Exhaustion coming from nowhere other than looking at that one route you could take.  Excitement when you heard about a particular alternative that you hadn’t thought of.

My spiritual director told me once that our series of conversations was about feeling more and not less.  Think about that.  If you saw your life as an opportunity to feel more, not less.  If you saw your decisions as opportunities to feel more and not less.  Maybe they would help you choose or refrain from choosing.  Maybe you would recognize feelings as a gift and not as irritants.  Maybe they could be tools and keys and tiny maps for you as you considered the choices before you. 

So, if you were to feel your decisions; if you were to experience some part of the consequences to your decisions; if you were to let yourself sense or hear what would happen, how might that enable you to choose?