Hi Reader,

What’s the secret to making great decisions?

You’ve probably been told by parents, teachers, or some sort of authority that the key is to be logical and to stop listening to your feelings.

You’ve been told they get in the way, or that they cloud your judgment.

But when we rely only on logic, we miss a critical detail.

Intro: The Neurology of Decisions

In 1982, a Portuguese neuroscientist named Antonio Damasio made a fascinating discovery.

His patients with damaged emotional centers could think with perfect logic and ace IQ tests. Yet they couldn't choose a pen color or decide what to eat for lunch. They would spend hours analyzing every possible option, unable to make a choice.

The lesson was clear: It's not logic that drives our decisions, but our emotions.

And when we make decisions, we’re doing it to feel a certain way, or to not feel a certain way.

For example, if you’re scared of feeling like a failure, you’re less likely to make decisions that are risky. If you’re scared of rejection, you’re less likely to speak your truth to someone who might not like it.

This means that if we want to make great decisions, we must go beyond “logic” and “frameworks.” We must develop a deeper understanding of our emotions, and develop a new relationship to them, rather than ignoring or dismissing them.

That’s the secret. Great decision-making is the same as great emotional intelligence.

Because when we push emotions aside in the name of being "rational,” they don't disappear. They surface as procrastination, as analysis paralysis, or as that nagging feeling that something's off despite all the logical evidence.

Avoided emotions end up running your life. Calling the shots, skewing your judgement, and rewriting the entire context you end up living in.

This Prep Guide will help you unwind this pattern.

What to Expect

Over the next five lessons, we’ll do a deep dive into emotions and how they drive decisions.

• First, we’ll start by revealing the inner mechanics of how avoidance backfires, and then explore a practical method of how to avoided emotions.
• Then, we’ll show you how to work with these “negative” emotions in a new way that doesn’t require effort or strain.
• We’ll break down some key tools on how to work with areas of your life that feel particularly stuck or paralyzing.
• Finally, we’ll teach you how to use principles to step out of these patterns to reclaim your decisions and your life.

Think of this as a “lite” version of the Great Decisions Course. It will create an important intellectual foundation that you can build upon to go much deeper during the course itself.

That’s where we’ll be training you on how to actually practice and integrate these learnings in an embodied way, to ensure that it makes a lasting impact on your life and your decisions.

Go deeper: Watch this video breakdown on decisions
(and get a sneak peek into future lessons):

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Big Love,

Joe

PS. To respect your inbox, we'll only be sending out the first few lessons. Only waitlist members will get all five (plus early access to applications). Click below to be sure that you get the full Prep Guide.