Brain Food for Pioneering Spirits: How does reflection support us in decision-making, if decisions are made mostly emotionally in the first place? Marc, Jürgen and Sonja join Dr. Yasemin Yazan to explore gut feeling, the “what you see is what there is” bias, and why we so often reflect only to confirm a decision we’d already made emotionally…
Note: This session was recorded live in German as part of the Deep Talk Club, so the video above is German-language audio only. What follows is an English translation of the conversation, lightly edited for readability — the back-and-forth between the moderator and participants is preserved, but the original timestamps and speaker names have been left out.
A very good morning to you all. Today we’re talking together about reflection and decision-making, and want to look at how reflection supports us in making decisions. That’s the question we’re dealing with. And yes, I’m really curious what impulses, first thoughts come up for you on this, what concrete examples we can pick up and bring in. So you’re all very warmly invited again today to join in, open up different perspectives, so that we can work our way through the exchange to see what shared results we can generate from the insights here. We record the room the entire time, meaning anyone who joins automatically agrees that the whole thing gets published. And we have three small room rules: a profile picture you can be recognized by, last name, and at least one sentence in your bio, so we can make sure these are genuine contributions and not Clubhouse trolls. Anyone who doesn’t want that for whatever reason can of course also just use the chat to bring in thoughts, questions, or similar. As long as it fits well, doesn’t disrupt the flow of the exchange, and can still be added, we’ll pick that up accordingly, provided the questions or thoughts haven’t already been addressed, and gladly respond to them. So, with that, I’ll mute myself for now this morning and see who’d like to join in on the topic of reflection and decision-making — how does reflection support us in decision-making.
A very good morning, dear Marc. What are your first thoughts on the topic? Yes, my first thoughts, when I go inward, are that reflection always helps me get out of an emotional state. And this morning I thought, well, when do I even reflect if I have good feelings? If I’m totally happy, say, unhappy, I do reflect on that myself, I do become aware of it, but there’s actually little cause to reflect on it, because I’m doing great, I’m in the flow, I can move mountains. So usually I get into reflecting when something has happened that put me into an emotional state, professionally or privately, that doesn’t throw me completely off track, but that really occupies me. And then there are two ways this helps me, how I can get into a different emotional state. One would be self-reflection, though that takes some practice for me, because at first it can feel a bit odd to talk to yourself or have an inner dialogue with yourself. Or, what also always helps me — I’m sure you all know this — something terrible happens, or “terrible” is already an evaluation, we think something terrible is happening, and it helps me if I say the situation that’s occupying me out loud. That means I have to structure it in my head and tell someone. Usually that’s my partner or a very good friend I value. And in making the situation clear, in telling what actually happened, the first answers and approaches to solutions already come to me. Or that would already be the first part toward a solution, or I notice, while speaking, or in my counterpart’s response, what I definitely don’t want. And that would be the start for today.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. And you’re already very, very strongly in this, so to speak, how do I then arrive at a decision, looking at this process. Let me briefly note here that at some point in the coming days we’ll definitely also have a room where we look at various forms, types, settings, and methods of reflection too. And today the focus is really more on decision-making itself, and less on the process of how I go about it. And to look again, does it actually support us? And I’ve now understood, also from what you said, that it always helps you when you’re in an emotional state, that you look at things again, in whatever way, and thereby gain clarity about what you want, or rather what you definitely don’t want, and that ultimately helps you in decision-making. Can I summarize it that way, Marc, is that correct?
Perfect, and there you named the word I forgot to bring in — clarity, exactly. It helps me define clarity, find clarity, and that’s why I personally want to go into reflection, to have clarity, because in my emotional state I have a subjective reality and also a subjective perception, and I only manage to arrive at a different perception if I somehow manage, through some process, to get out of this emotion. Because, again, for me I always get into the topic of reflection in the form of when something emotional is brought to me. And those are the strongest emotional triggers for me — something with the family, something with my close environment, people who matter to me. Usually those are the nice things, with good things, I just take those in and keep going. I don’t need to think about that further, or in the professional environment either.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. And that raises yet another question for me, because we’ve already mentioned in the context of decisions, in various rooms, that there are findings from brain research showing that our decisions are basically made predominantly emotionally, and that only afterward do we look for rational ways to find arguments to support that — there’s a broad consensus in brain research on this. What’s still debated, so to speak, since there isn’t enough evidence yet, is whether it might not even be completely emotional, and whether we’re under an illusion that we make decisions rationally in any way at all. If that were the case, or if it’s predominantly the case that decisions are actually made emotionally, to what extent does reflection actually help at all in that case? Or is that also an illusion we’re under? Marc, you wanted to start with that directly, and then I can gladly bring in Jürgen.
Dear Jürgen, I’ll keep it brief. That’s exactly the point. Whenever I notice that I’m in an emotional state, I press the off-switch for myself and try to get out of the emotion as quickly as possible, because otherwise I know, from the past, that my decisions are disastrous. I try, whenever possible, not to make an emotional decision but a rational one. And for that I absolutely have to get out of this emotional state as fast as possible, into the helicopter perspective. Thanks for waiting, Jürgen.
Wonderful, thank you so much. Jürgen, what do you say to that?
Thank you for the opening, dear Yasemin. Good morning, and everyone in the room. These last remarks, both from you and from Yasemin, have expanded my first spark a bit. Let me try to stay close to the topic and establish a connection. I asked myself, what is the connection actually? How do reflection and decision-making fit together? And even if this might sound a bit too schematic, let me recap once more. We’ve more or less agreed that reflection is a kind of inward view, and that in the process, alongside becoming aware within the situation, there’s also a weighing of our strengths and weaknesses, a recollection of experience and also of lived imprints in very specific situations, including decision-making processes. That’s my answer so far to the question, what actually is reflection — an inward view. Now I won’t address the “what” but the “what for” — what’s the purpose of reflection at all? We touched on that briefly too, and two really essential positions popped up for me. Why do we even reflect at all? And one was, to make decisions, and that’s where the connection to today’s topic comes in. Basically, the decision to make a decision is, for me, an outcome quantity from the reflection process, and essentially connected — this has already been mentioned too — with a responsibility I then have to take on. So, and now the question for me is, if I’ve now defined these two positions, the what and the what-for, and find that decision has something to do with reflection, and we have a reflection process, then there’s also a decision-making process. We’ve also talked in various rooms about how such a decision-making process actually runs within us. And so the question for me now is, dear all, what position does reflection take within the individual stages of this decision-making process, or does reflection even factor into this decision-making process at all, or is it merely a prerequisite for triggering the decision-making process? And now I’ll pick up the last point from both of you, emotion. Is reflection, alongside other functions, maybe also the function that afterward checks again whether I decided correctly, and whether I let myself be too strongly carried away by my feelings in the situation with the decision? Basically, for me, our room today is a merging of two processes that can be generalized on the meta-level, in my view, but which run individually differently for everyone. Admittedly, but the anchor points, in my view, can be standardized, if you will. And now it’s about pinning down where exactly reflection factors in. Where do we go into the inward view everywhere, in order to make a well-founded decision? Thank you for listening for so long.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. Marc, would you like to share your thoughts here?
Yes, dear Jürgen, I’d like to say, personally — I already said this yesterday — the inward view, I underline everything you said, but there are so, so many situations where the outward view is just as important, because the inward view alone won’t help me there, because to make a decision and to arrive at a new perception for myself, I have to go to the outward view. A small example: I’m an entrepreneur, my client is gone. The inward view would be, I reflect, what did I do, oh no, again, so stupid, were my prices too high, is my product not good enough. And the outward view would be, maybe that has nothing to do with me at all, maybe he’s just having a bad business patch, maybe I should just call him and ask what’s going on. Maybe he’s moving, maybe he has private problems. So for me reflection is always both self-reflection, outward reflection, and inward view and outward view.
Yes, let me formulate a question here too, because the question of “what for, regarding reflection” for me, in this context now with the room topic of decisions or decision-making, can we just leave it at “to make a decision”? I’d actually like to open up this aspect a bit more generally too. We don’t need to answer it today, but let’s leave it as an open door here — whether reflection always serves to make a decision, or whether I can’t also simply carry out a reflection, for example, just to make an evaluation of a situation, without it necessarily always having to lead to a decision. That would be an example that comes to mind. It could very well be a decision-making process, and now let’s pick up what you said, Jürgen — it can, but doesn’t have to, involve reflection. I can of course also make decisions purely emotionally, but if I then build in a reflection somewhere, so to speak, where is that exactly? Is that a prerequisite, so to speak, for making a, say, good or fitting or whatever kind of decision? Does decision-making always need reflection? Or is it then the differentiation between conscious and unconscious reflection that we already talked about yesterday too? That means the reflection process always takes place, just not necessarily always consciously at that point. So, let’s look at the terminology more closely here again. Jürgen, would you like to follow up on that?
Yes, gladly, and I’d like to express a little bit of my disappointment, please take that as a joke, dear Marc — that was actually exactly a topic already in the very first room, that reflection has two dimensions. One is pure self-reflection. So for me the meta-level is, it’s an inward view. But it needs to be distinguished in two respects — an inward view explicitly only onto myself, onto the individual person, the individual position. But it’s also necessarily, and especially in decision-making, the inclusion of the individual position within the environment. So that should never be lost sight of, and thanks again for this reminder, because I’ve also had the experience that this term tends to be used more in the direction of pure self-inward-reflection, switching off, blinkers — that term came up yesterday too, blinkers, tunnel vision, field, that’s not correct. Checkmark on that. Dear Yasemin, yes, I’m completely with you. Both the outcome quantity, the answer to the question of what-for, regarding making decisions and taking on responsibility, is for me certainly only one or two essential components out of the entire pool of outcome quantities that can result from reflection. But as I said, for me it’s still a quite decisive aspect, where reflection, where I personally conduct an inward view. And now we’re at the topic, and now it’s actually up to you to set the structure, with the question you already posed adequately, which possible questions pop up here. Is it a necessary prerequisite? Does reflection accompany the entire decision-making process, or only parts of it? And above all, what position does reflection hold afterward? Once I’ve made my decision — and let me add one more, and I’m getting ahead of myself here, but this is a really decisive point for me, because I come back to what’s true — reflection is an inward view, among other things, onto the experiences we’ve had. And so, afterward, following a decision-making process, this reflecting on the decision — and now another term becomes really essential for me — the consequences that came with it, again enriches our reflection reservoir for future decisions. I hope I’ve conveyed that reasonably clearly. Thank you for listening.
Yes, thank you so much. And I think what becomes clear, to some extent, from these remarks — and we can gladly check this together again — is that there are different loops of reflection, so to speak, occurring at various points. That means it’s definitely not a matter of either/or, but it can definitely serve as a prerequisite. One would have to check whether it’s always the prerequisite for making the decision or triggering the decision-making process, or whether it’s a prerequisite for, say, gaining clarity, in order to then make a decision based on that. Then, within the decision-making process itself, checking where it occurs — there are various loops of reflection at different stages. And then also afterward, once the decision has been made, for example looking back and making certain checks again. That means life doesn’t have just a starting point and an ending point, it keeps going, and there are maybe further forks in the road and so on, and again and again there are times when we look back and, say, make a reassessment based on a reflection again. And we can gladly discuss that together in theory, but we can also, if you feel like it, if you have a concrete example that comes to mind, actually pick up an example, or various examples, to work our way along an example and check that. Marc, Jürgen, would either of you like to add something?
Go ahead, Marc. Thanks, dear Yasemin. I’d like to start with the decision-making process. I want to be a bit provocative again and say, we don’t need reflection at all for the decision-making process. The decision-making process always takes place. There’s always a decision-making process happening, because not deciding also means deciding. If my partner leaves me, I don’t need to go into reflection for that — if she intends to, that will happen automatically. Now, for all points, in all life areas that affect us, the only question for me is, what makes me feel most comfortable? Not that I find the situation great, but what do I feel most comfortable with. And we had the topic of self-empowerment in Deep Talk Club too. And if I’m self-empowered, if I have the feeling that I’m not letting a situation spin completely out of control, meaning I still have a little bit, a hint of a chance, to steer a situation, then I’m self-empowered. And to maintain this self-empowerment, then it makes sense — only then does it make sense, or it helped me, everyone can decide that for themselves — to go into reflection. Because if I do nothing, certain processes will happen anyway, whether it’s that I lose clients, or that my partner leaves me, because I just lean back, close my eyes, close my ears, but the world keeps turning. So reflection has nothing to do with the decision-making process. Reflection only has to do with whether I still have some influence, how I feel, and whether I can still steer something — whether I’m still holding the wheel, namely the wheel of my own life.
Thank you. Let me differentiate again here — especially with the example you brought up, that’s a decision made by someone else, where I initially have no hand in it, in that sense, but rather have to first accept the decision. Of course I can then look at how I deal with the other person’s decision, or whether there might be further conversations afterward that let me steer things in one direction or another, or similar. But it’s a decision made by the other person, and it’s not initially within my sphere of influence — it’s a fact I’m confronted with, that the other partner has decided to end the relationship, in this case. And because that’s not within my immediate sphere of influence — as I said, I can still exert influence — but initially I’m confronted with something coming from outside, and it’s not within my inward view. I can reflect on it, but we need to make a clean distinction here regarding the decisions being made. Jürgen, would you like to follow up here too? I saw you twitch again, and then we can gladly bring in Sonja too.
Thank you, dear Yasemin. I’d like to pick up Marc’s situation, since you said, let’s pin it down on an example. Let’s take this example — the partner, or my partner, comes and drops a bombshell, saying, the relationship is over. In connection with what you just said, what comes up as the first point for me, in my view, for the decision-making process, is that we have a problem. And this problem is — you made the necessity distinction for stage 1 of the decision-making process — it’s been imposed on us, forced upon us, meaning it wasn’t planned by us. It’s not my problem, but it’s been brought to me. But for me it’s the first stage of the decision-making process. I identify a problem, because only if there’s a deviation between an actual state and a desired state do I have a problem, and then I have to make a decision, dear Marc, absolutely correct — do I accept this problem, or do I just reject it and say, I don’t care, I’m going to training now, whether you want to break up or not. The question always remains whether, in my head, further reflections take place. So, and now, as someone quite structure-oriented, the first question for me is, if we say problem identification is the first stage of the decision-making process, does a reflection already factor in there. And let me take the step to the next one, to maybe make it clearer. The next thing would be, for me, information gathering about this problem. So I establish, I have a problem, and then I establish what information I even have about this problem. So, and if I may bring these two positions together, those would be the connecting points to say, do we already enter a reflection process at stage 1, I have a problem, or at stage 2, when I say, what’s actually happening to me, what information is currently being brought to me, and what information or knowledge do I currently have? And the reason I’m emphasizing this so much, especially with your example, dear Marc — an emotionally based problem is, in my view, stage 2, the first recursive loop for reflection. Because we know this, we all know it — first take a deep breath, all the way to sleeping on a problem for a night — that’s nothing other than going into reflection, and for example answering the question, if I decide now, then I’m deciding purely on an emotional basis, and possibly at a status where I haven’t yet become aware of what information I even need to evaluate this problem. For example, is the fault hers, is the fault mine, what mistakes did we make, what mistakes did I make, and so on. Just as an example. Thank you for listening, and yes, quite an interesting matter.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much, and I’d like to go one step further back. From my perspective, the problem identification itself is already a result of reflection, because emotionally I react to it immediately. That means, biochemically, certain processes happen very, very fast in the background, which lead me to identify it as a problem, for example, or to say I don’t care. And even if I say I don’t care, that’s already a first result stored based on prior thoughts, experiences, and so on, which is what leads me to this evaluation in the first place. So maybe that as an addition. And with that, I’d like to bring in Sonja for the first time. A very good morning, dear Sonja.
A very good morning to you all. Yes, it’s very exciting listening to you. I wanted to just listen at first too, but I’d like to contribute a bit, because a term kept coming up, though rather in passing, and I find it really important in the consideration of reflection and decision-making. And that term is evaluation. In my view, reflection — or the way we commonly understand it, meaning conscious reflecting, when we use the term reflection — enables us to make an evaluation of the information, and based on this evaluation, to then make as good a decision as possible. And in the remarks from both Marc and Jürgen, I heard that the effort lies in deciding as little as possible on an emotional basis, whereas you, Yasemin, just said earlier — and I underline that, because it matches my level of knowledge too — that our decision-making is predominantly emotional, and maybe even completely emotional. And even though we hear and know this, our effort is still to not make an emotional decision. I find that super exciting, because that basically means we’re working against our own nature, because we live in a world model that tells us decisions made on an emotional basis are the worse decisions. But what if we assumed that it would actually be much, much better and healthier for us overall if we listened much more to these emotions, and tried, primarily, priority one, to draw on the emotions first, and only secondarily check whether it’s also rationally defensible? I personally am convinced that we’d then have a lot more happy, satisfied people, and also a healthier society. However, when we talk about emotions, we very often talk about disruptive, hindering emotions. And not every emotion is a negative one. Sometimes it’s actually good to make a more emotional decision. And reflecting helps us stick a label onto the individual pieces of information and thereby weight them. What actually matters to us in decision-making? Or what matters for this particular situation in decision-making? Do we need a larger share of emotion here, or a larger share of reason? Or would it be conducive to the overall result, especially when several people are involved, to have a really good mix of reason and emotion? And I believe it’s exactly in this good mix that we weight everything in a balanced way. That’s something I definitely wanted to bring in. The evaluation, in my view, is decisive for making good decisions, and also for which ones we make.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. In this context, I’d like to bring in a second example too, from real life. Some time ago, someone from our network was considering whether to take another training course in a certain area — though an area in which the person was basically already an expert. And various people from various perspectives said, sure, you can do it, but honestly, you could probably teach them more than the other way around, so why do you actually want to do that? And what was interesting was that she then initially showed, so to speak, insight, in the sense of, yes, you’re basically right — not that we wanted to convince her or anything, but just this pointer from the outside. And still, we then noticed — and we discussed this and chuckled about it too — that situations came up where it became quite clear that she’d had further conversations, basically doing exactly what we do when we make decisions. So emotionally, she had basically already made this decision, and now she’s talking with other people about it to see what they say — supposedly to see what they say, but really it’s just about getting confirmation. Now she hasn’t gotten the confirmation from us, and she’s still in search mode, so to speak, trying to find the player, or players, who’d say, yes, you’re right, definitely do it, and then, so to speak, possibly get a good feeling again from that, that it’s also been rationally supported by others from outside. So I think that’s a textbook example of this, and it can be transferred to many, many areas. You can check this yourselves too, even when we really go into conversations with others about decision-making — what’s actually happening there? And that really supports this too, even if we don’t want to accept it, so to speak — this relevant emotion in this context, that we, so to speak, in many places, pretend to ourselves that we’re now trying to evaluate the situation and that we’re reflecting on it and so on, but basically we’re doing nothing other than searching long enough for the corresponding players or the corresponding arguments that support exactly what we might have already had as an impulse, as a gut feeling, in the first place. Now I’m curious what you say to that. Marc, Jürgen, Sonja, who’d like to?
Go ahead, Jürgen. Yes, basically my input has become unnecessary now. Thanks again, Sonja, for your contribution, I’m completely with you. I think that’s lived life, and Yasemin’s example illustrated it very clearly too — this retrospective backing of a decision already made emotionally, just through confirmation from the environment. Everyone can trace that for themselves, it happens to all of us again and again. What of course suggests itself, but I assume, dear Yasemin, that this would go beyond the scope of the room, is, if I look at the process purely process-based again, at the flow of this decision-making, and say there’s a fork in decision-making, in the decision-making process, at the very top level, namely, do I decide emotionally or do I decide rationally. If this fork exists, and I’m convinced our brain basically divides quite essentially into these two structures, then, in my view, there’s actually already a rather rational decision within that. But as I said, I find it extremely interesting how something like that unfolds, that first impulse of emotion, this gut feeling, which for me is nothing other than a collection of all the experiences we’ve internalized. The gut feeling isn’t something purely biological — for me it draws from a huge pool of experiences we’ve accumulated, and the brain — Kahneman calls it System 1, or the emotional area — has first right of access to search, have I had something like this before, and can I use that now as a problem solution? Because System 2, logical thinking, we already touched on this yesterday I think, requires a far higher demand on resources and time in order to reflect. But I don’t really want to take this further at this point — I think, this just occurred to me because of your remark, dear Sonja, it’s actually, with regard to our topic of reflection and decision-making, another level, an essential level, a decision level before it, as a meta-level, namely this fork, purely emotional and rational. And, question mark, isn’t that possibly even a reflection itself? Thank you for listening.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. And I find this point really, really important, because we should first understand this, actually at this point, in order to also draw appropriate conclusions for today’s room topic we’re discussing. You just put it very aptly — the gut feeling is basically nothing other than the sum of experiences. That means what happens biochemically in the brain is that we get various pieces of information, so to speak stimuli, from outside, which get converted and, based on our prior experiences, immediately evaluated, and then a signal goes toward the gut, so to speak, and that’s the gut feeling we perceive. That can sometimes be good, sometimes bad. We already talked about the question that always arises — this gut feeling, am I “more right” with it, or am I just making more mistakes with decisions and so on? And you can’t answer that categorically, because de facto it’s based on prior experience. Now it could be, for example, that these are deviating prior experiences that don’t fit this context. Or it could be that there are certain knowledge gaps, for example experience gaps, that can’t be adapted to the given situation, and yet our brain still sends corresponding signals that get perceived as a gut feeling, as a gut feeling. That means, based on prior experience I’ve had, I can be very, very right, so to speak. But I can also be completely off. And with awareness of this process, I now get, once again — and here we’re back at self-empowerment — the opportunity to establish self-efficacy for myself, by not just simply accepting this feeling I now have in my gut, so to speak, but now quite consciously going into reflection, and for example specifically checking, what prior experiences do I actually have? Can I even judge this? Do I maybe need expert knowledge from outside, or whatever? That then has a lot to do with the topic at hand too, to arrive at a solution that’s right for me, not purely emotionally, but rationally too.
Go ahead, Sonja. You’re raising a really, really essential point there, I think, with this questioning — how valuable is the gut feeling actually, how well does it guide me? Basically you’ve already given the answer, but I’d already raised my hand, so I’ll say something about it too. Because the moment we reflect, we have the chance to train that, and to get into good contact with our gut feeling, and to identify what this gut feeling actually draws from. And if we do that again and again, we get a very good sense of whether our gut feeling — on what criteria our gut feeling decides. That means, for me, nothing other than that we’re in very good contact with ourselves. If we regularly reflect and also include the body reactions, then we know how we react to certain reactions, and we get to know ourselves better too. And once we know that, we can also make really good decisions from the gut feeling. But if we now categorically say the gut feeling makes the better decisions, then I’d say, oh, careful. Because if someone never reflects and never questions what this gut feeling is actually signaling, that can become very dangerous. Because then exactly what was said at the beginning happens — that the gut feeling is the emotional, purely emotional component. And that often leads us astray, because it’s based on prior experiences, on imprints. And whether those are good or bad, or beneficial for us — that’s maybe the better term — we only know once we question it and see it in the overall context. It’s not about us always just feeling good, it’s about us feeling good within the context of a society and being capable of living. And that all of this feels harmonious and balanced overall. And for that we always need this comparison, again and again. Thank you.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. And you brought in a really important keyword again there — it’s not always about us feeling good. Let me open up another example — when I go shopping, I also feel very, very good buying all kinds of things I find cool. And depending on which perspective you look at it from, that doesn’t necessarily have to have been good or fitting or right, so to speak, but it can also have disastrous consequences. So, in that sense, it’s not always just about a good feeling, but again and again about making corresponding evaluations through reflection, and based on that, making new decisions again. Jürgen, you wanted to add something too.
Yes, thank you, dear Yasemin, following up on Sonja’s remarks. Let me try to make a connection to what’s been said so far regarding the decision-making process and the reflection process. If you remember, I once, in my own self-important way, defined the first two stages in the decision-making process as, first, problem identification — “hello, do I have a problem?” — and second, information gathering. And if I now bring together what you both just said, it becomes clearer and clearer to me — if I were asked what the most important position in the decision-making process is, I’d clearly point to information gathering. And, thanks to your remarks, that’s now taken on two dimensions for me, closely connected with reflection. Namely, information gathering means communication. And specifically, both communication with myself and communication with the environment. And let’s stay with Marc’s example of the problem in the relationship. Then that means, thank you dear Sonja, first, communication with myself — do I now listen to my gut feeling, or do I first think about what actually happened and how this problem came about? And the second level of information gathering, of reflection, is more outward, into the environment. That certainly includes the question, at this stage, of what’s currently happening in my environment, or how my environment is reacting to it. And in that sense, these are nothing other than two, or one reflection process with two different outcome quantities, from within myself and from the environment, which ultimately serve to make stage 1, the problem, clearer and more comprehensible for me, and then, at some point, to make a decision. This connection has become really clear to me now. Thanks again.
Yes, thank you so much. That brings me to thinking further and comparing it with a finding from my dissertation, which I find quite exciting. In that context, it was about professionalism in coaching, and specifically regarding the evaluation of the settings and the situation in coaching, at least three positions were generally identified as necessary to neutralize things, to make a multi-perspective comparison. That was the term ultimately used for the result. And here another position was distinguished, namely — the environment, in this case, would be the coachee, so I look at what the coachee reports back to me, what the reactions are, then, what my own reactions are, looking at that, so to speak, and then also taking a middle position and looking at it again from this bird’s-eye perspective. And maybe we can transfer that here — then we’d have another distinction, so to speak, when looking at myself — on one hand maybe the gut feeling, so to speak, this emotional feeling level, and on the other hand this meta-level, and reflection is what enables us to take this meta-level. What do you say to that, Marc?
Thank you so much for the setup, dear Yasemin. I’ll now bring in a word we haven’t had for a long time. Jürgen, you’re going to jump out of your seat with excitement. Education. Information gathering is useless by itself. Information rains down on me, I first take it in. And now I have the option — we already had this in the room — we see what we want to see. If I want to see that I’m right and my partner has no right whatsoever, I’ll gather all the information that confirms exactly that, exactly what Armin explained. If I think my partner is right, I’ll gather exactly the information to arrive at that conclusion. And that’s why, for information gathering to be effective, we fundamentally need to engage with ourselves in a calm phase, before the problem exists yet, in a calm phase, and decide, do we want to stay self-determined in our lives, self-determined or externally controlled? And if we stay self-determined, we automatically opt for reflection, because then we gather information, but we’re then also willing to gather the information we might not even want, and that shows something completely different from how we’ve evaluated the situation. And if we want to arrive at a new evaluation of a situation, if we want to arrive at new information, then we first have to fundamentally, per se, decide, am I even willing to do that, can I manage to get information that doesn’t suit me, am I willing to entertain a different line of thought? If I don’t follow this line of thought, or if I haven’t decided that, if I’m absolutely not willing to open myself up or let my head spin, or as we said, to be open, then information gathering does nothing for me at all, because I’ll only search for the information that keeps my actions, or my victimhood, intact. We often feel like victims too, and then I’ll find dozens of pieces of information about why my boss is stupid, why the company unfairly fired me, and why my partner is gone, and the information will be correct. All the information is correct, because we all see what we want to see. And without this decision to want to see something different, we’ll always get the same information.
Yes, thank you so much. Jürgen raised his hand first, then Sonja, and after that we’ll move into today’s closing round. Jürgen.
Thank you, dear Yasemin, because I jumped up in excitement, not least to hug you, dear Marc, because you touched on a really essential unconscious bias. It goes by the term “what you see is what there is.” That’s exactly the state you described, as decision-making — basically making stage 2 of the decision-making process, information gathering, easy for ourselves, and taking what we currently perceive and know and believe to know, without questioning whether there might be something else. A big hug from me, an essential interface to our previous topic, unconscious bias. Thank you for that.
Wonderful, thank you so much. Sonja. Yes, that example shows us very nicely that, first of all, it’s important to work our way along an example, because it’s then much easier to see whether all the stages and all the considerations have been included. And especially with this separation example, I noticed that the considerations tend to go more in the direction of understanding — understanding what actually happened and why it happened. And maybe also clarifying, so to speak, this question of blame — who bears more responsibility for it failing. But decision-making is also about considering how to deal with it now. And that’s much more than just understanding. It’s built on the basis of understanding — and not just how the problem arose, but also how the whole thing feels for me, what consequences it has for me — that, based on this, you then make a decision that leads us into a better future, or into a future that feels good and right for us, and fits us well, under new conditions, because we can no longer restore the old state. It’s completely irrelevant whether it’s about relationships, or about the workplace, or even about morally difficult decisions, like how do I care for my parents, or do I put them in a care facility. Those are really, really hard questions too, where reflection helps us make good decisions. And there it’s not at all obvious which direction the decision will go. But that could already be a whole new topic. It’s definitely too late for that at this hour, but an interesting aspect nonetheless. Thank you.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. And that basically closes the circle too, namely in that we said we have three overarching themes that we’ll bring together afterward. The first overarching theme we’re currently dealing with is reflection. Then, once we’ve rounded that off, it continues with thinking as the overarching theme, and then acting as the overarching theme. And then we’ll bring the connections together afterward in reflection, thinking, and acting, so to speak. And what you just mentioned, dear Sonja, is already leading into the second and third strand too, so to speak. And we’ll definitely look at that. So it fits wonderfully to round off today’s room by saying, these are basically new rooms, we’ll definitely look at that again, and we can gladly pick up one example or another in that context too, provided we can still remember them, and spin the threads further once we get there. For today, I’d like to round off with our closing round, and then announce how things continue tomorrow. Marc, Jürgen, Sonja — what were your highlights, what would you like to underline again? Marc.
Dear Sonja, the sentence you said at the end — I think that’s the root that occupies all of us, that ages all of us here. We all have situations where we don’t recognize, but where it’s simply the case that you can’t restore the old state anymore. And that’s totally painful to deal with. And I hope this room helps give us tools, not techniques — there probably aren’t any — to restore the old state. That wish is something we all carry within us, but that we get into action and no longer feel like victims. And just not feeling like a victim, just having the possibility to still steer something, gives you a really, really good feeling again, because then you’re moving, then you have your life back in your own hands again. And for me — I’m repeating myself now, this has all been said twice already — not being able to restore the old state, that’s the hardest thing I’ve had to learn to accept.
Thank you so much. Jürgen? Yes, and that lets me draw a connection, both to Sonja’s last remarks and to yours, Marc, when I say, well, reflection, which is really essential for me, also after decision-making and after arriving at a result, this reflection has two facets. Thanks again, Sonja, for naming the term again, which is important to me too. On one hand, it’s reflection on the responsibility I’ve taken on with this decision, and on the other hand, also on the dimension of the consequences this decision has generated for me. And those are, for me, the two essential anchor points of reflection after a decision-making process, quite deliberately stated explicitly. Heartfelt thanks again for this room. I found it extraordinarily refreshing, and I completely agree with you, dear Sonja — let’s keep forcing poor Marc to give us an example from real life that we can hang our topics on and work our way along. It really is an extremely refreshing matter. Thanks for that, and have a lovely day, dear all.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much, Sonja. It’s a great pleasure for me to talk with you about topics like this. And it shows me again how valuable it is that we think about things like this at all, and that reflection and decision-making are two things that significantly increase the quality of our lives. And I thank you, Yasemin, simply for providing these rooms, for setting the topics, and for doing it so wonderfully that people keep coming back here and joining the discussion. That’s just really, really valuable and wonderful. Thank you for that.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. I also thought that was a mega room. And on this aspect, that the old state can no longer be restored — that can be transferred to many contexts too. Even after a reflection process, so to speak, the old state can no longer be restored. Not the state itself, but also my state of mind. And in that context, I’d like to bring in this quote too: “The more I know, the more I know that I don’t know.” And there are often moments where I think, sometimes I’d like to go back to the old state and not want to realize this or that. In that sense, these reflection rooms also serve to change the state, so to speak. Sometimes you long for one state or another back again, for small, brief moments. But by and large, they help us empower ourselves and become self-efficacious, in order to lead a self-determined life. And that’s the mission of education. So I’m happy to be able to round off with that today. Tomorrow we continue with reflection in everyday life — how can we integrate reflection into our daily routines? I’m really, really curious what comes together there too. And then, afterward, on Sunday, I’ll continue with the digital campfire, with candid stories at the digital campfire, and there we’ll go into part 1 of reflection, where I’d like to reference various examples quite concretely from my own life, in relation to daily routines. So you’re all very warmly invited to join on the weekend too, at 8am each time, both tomorrow morning at 8 and on Sunday. I wish you well, and I hope we’ll hear each other again tomorrow. Until then, ciao! Ciao.
