Act with full awareness.
The Decision Maker
The Decision Maker is the internal mechanism that chooses how you respond in any moment. These resources explore how to pause, think clearly and make better decisions by balancing the Warrior, the Willing and the Wise.
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There’s a pattern that turns up more often than we like to admit, where the need to feel better than everyone is followed by guilt about having needed it, sometimes after we’ve already hurt someone in the process. The Warrior is reaching for worth through being better. The Willing arrives after with the guilt of…
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We use the words emotions and feelings as if they mean the same thing. Most of the time that’s fine, but when we’re trying to understand what’s actually happening inside us, the difference starts to matter. Emotions are the signals within how we feel, and naming them more accurately changes the quality of the information…
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The moment I started writing personal stories about The Decision Maker, my Willing started worrying. People will recognise themselves. Someone will call me two faced for not showing all my emotions in the moment. I argued back that the truth is most of us feel these things anyway, but the anxiety didn’t go anywhere. Here’s…
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Impatience isn’t the problem. The problem is what happens when it reaches the wheel before awareness does — you start painting the hallway, then the skirting boards, then wonder why the evening’s gone and nothing important got done. Here’s how to let impatience wake you up without letting it run you.
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A long day, a tired family, a hotel reception, and a request for ID I didn’t have. Within seconds my tone had an edge — measured, but no longer neutral. Tiredness doesn’t feel like an emotion. It feels physical. But what it does to the gap between stimulus and response is why so many of…
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One of the more confusing things about boundaries is that doing the right thing doesn’t always feel good afterwards. It can bring mixed feelings. Sometimes a boundary brings relief, calm, clarity, or a sense of protection. Yet it can also leave us feeling heavy, unsettled, guilty, or unexpectedly sad. That can be hard to make…
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Most of us don’t need to build our Willing from scratch. Our softer, more gentle side is already there. The task is learning how to build your Willing in a way that makes it safe, easy to trust, and more available when life needs honesty, care or connection. For some people, their Willing has been…
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Most of us don’t need to build our Warrior from scratch, we already have one within us. The real skill is learning how to build your Warrior in a way that gives it a clear role, makes it dependable and used in a deliberate way. The issue is that it’s usually either buried, inconsistent, or…
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Most of us recognise the moment we get snappy. You hear a sharpness in your voice as you respond to something small. The tone comes out more impatient than you intended and within seconds you realise you didn’t want to say it like that. Often the reaction has already happened before awareness arrives. A few…
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What is emotional contagion? Emotional contagion is the tendency for emotions to spread between people. Without realising it, we often absorb the emotional tone of the environments we enter. A tense meeting can leave you feeling tight and guarded. A relaxed conversation with friends can lift your mood before you’ve even noticed why. This happens…
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One of the most useful things to understand when thinking about reacting vs responding, is The Decision Maker steering wheel always has one of your forces controlling it. In every moment something is driving your behaviour. The question is simply which force is sitting in that seat. Sometimes it’s The Wise. When that happens, decisions…
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Learning how to think before you speak and take action changes the quality of your conversations, your relationships and your reputation. Most tension doesn’t begin with bad intent, it begins with speed. And many of us struggle to slow our mind to firstly listen and secondly be more considered in what we say and do.…
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Every decision you make is influenced by emotion. That makes emotional intelligence vital to living the life you want. Not just obvious feelings like anger or excitement. Even choices that feel logical are shaped by what’s happening internally and by the emotional atmosphere around you. Other people’s frustration, urgency or anxiety can affect your state.…
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For the last 24 hours I’ve felt anxious. Not paralysing, but enough to notice it properly. My head feels foggy, a little scattered and it’s hard to concentrate. I feel mentally off balance and have temporarily lost some capacity. Physically I’m tired in that heavy way where the idea of spending the day in bed…
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Learning how to make calm decisions has been one of the most important shifts in my life. After all, we make dozens of decisions every day, and over time they compound to shape how it feels to be us. Completion pulls at me. The drive for progress. The desire to be helpful. So do unfinished…
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I’ve never seen either side of me as a problem. It’s just for a long time I didn’t understand them, and perhaps not fully value my different feelings. I’ve been told I’m ‘too nice’ at times, but also too harsh or distant. Knowing what I do now about myself, I can understand that view when…
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When your partner feels off, quiet or slightly distant, it can be surprisingly hard to ignore. If you’ve ever wondered “why my partner’s mood affects me”, it’s often that nothing obvious has happened, but something feels different and that change can create anxiety quickly. You can find yourself wondering what’s wrong, what’s changed or whether…
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What is emotional independence? Emotional independence is a skill within emotional intelligence (EQ). It’s the ability to feel emotional energy, care about others and remain open to connection without your emotional state being controlled or overly influenced by the reactions, moods or behaviour of the people around you. It applies not only in close relationships,…
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Staying emotionally balanced is not about feeling calm all the time. It’s about staying connected to yourself when your emotions rise and fall, whether they come from your own internal world or from the people around you. A lot of emotional imbalance comes from what we absorb without noticing. Other people’s tension, frustration, or urgency…
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Another great quote from smarter people than me. I remember reading this in my early 20’s and it stuck with me.
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Emotional intelligence (EI), often called emotional quotient (EQ), is the ability to recognise, understand and manage your own emotions while also recognising and responding effectively to the emotions of others. It involves emotional awareness, self-regulation, empathy and the ability to navigate relationships constructively. This concept became widely known through the work of psychologist Daniel Goleman,…
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Rushing feels productive in the moment, but it often creates mistakes, resistance, rework, and movement in the wrong direction. The urgency trap is what happens when speed gets ahead of clear thinking.