Essential Zen Wisdom For Critical Life Decisions

Decisions are choices between options. Sometimes made instantly, they can impact our lives for years to come. Present emotion can color and shape this judgment.

Warren Buffet can take a year to decide and a day to act. 

Zen wisdom encourages us to observe without attachment. It is a critical tool to navigate important decisions with clarity, unburdened by past emotional baggage. 

Feelings are not truths

Biases

Some sources suggest that the average person makes 35,000 choices per day. 

Our brains are constantly at work. They’re incredible supercomputers operating at an estimated billion billion calculations per second.

To cope with this astonishing amount of activity, brains use pattern recognition and neural mechanisms for shortcuts. Previous experiences modify neural circuitry, allowing us to categorize and select efficiently, which is very helpful in our daily lives.

However, these shortcuts are influenced by conditioning from previous experience. Our memories can also be incredibly inaccurate and unreliable when choosing a future path.

Resistance

When you feel a need to make a decision, you encounter resistance. Uncertainty means anxiety.

Humans will do anything to avoid pain. We are more afraid of what we will lose than gain. Big decisions can easily be weighted toward the safest option rather than one that could have a positive impact.

Even for major life decisions, we will avoid asking ourselves deep questions. We don’t spend enough time rationalizing. 

Unconventional Zen thinking

Jiddu Krishnamurti challenged our conventional way of thinking. He believed that true freedom lies beyond choice. He advocated for a state of choiceless awareness. He believed that true awareness transcends preference, effort, or compulsion to do something.

Krishnamurti believed that truth cannot be reached through organizations, creeds, ideologies, or even knowledge. He found it through direct observation of what is. 

The compulsion to do something arises from conditioning. Pausing on a decision allows observation of any internal pressures to act in a certain way.

Decisions are then rooted in perception and attentive presence. It’s not about rejecting choices but about making them from a place of inner freedom and clarity.

Effortlessness effort doesn’t mean being passive. In fact, intense observation is required. This leads to deeper intelligence, and appropriate actions unfold naturally, unburdened by mental struggle.

To make the right choice, we must transcend the psychological ‘self.’ In this state, action arises from intelligence rather than conditioned needs.

Disproportionate thinking

All decisions can consume the same amount of energy. We waste too much energy on small decisions that won't make a difference in our lives. Procrastination is a major factor in slowing our progress. Eliminate as many decisions as possible to free up space for the big ones.

Decision-making takeaways

When you find peace, you find clarity; you will know the right thing to do:

• Remove any choices that won’t work. Often, just avoiding mistakes is the most helpful thing in life. 
• Ask yourself questions to find a deep understanding of any fundamentals.
• Identify and remove any conditional pressure that arises by asking if it is true. Past experiences can promote the need for safety, influencing present choices.
• Lean into things with short-term pain but long-term gain. 
• Eliminate time spent on small decisions.
• Make important decisions in unemotional states.
• Modern-day life has so many opportunities, so simplify by choosing what you really want. Seeking truth is different from playing mental tennis in your head. If you constantly toss and turn with a decision, then it's not for you. 
• Be present, and enjoy the here and now. Peace comes when you do what needs to be done in the moment. In the moment there may be no decisions at all. 

When you have chosen the right thing to do, there is no debate. If another thing turns out to have been more right, it doesn't matter because you still did the right thing. You did what you did, and life couldn’t have been any other way.

There is an even simpler conclusion about decisions. There are always only two choices: fear or love. Always choose what you love; it’s your default state. Doing what you love allows flow and drives effort, which leads to success.

Wishing you well,
Howard

"I don't know what I don't know, and I'm always a work in progress."