Never Decide Unless You Are Calm

A decision taken in anger, sadness or panic is not taken by you. It is taken by the emotion. Here is how to return to calm before deciding, in three steps.

Who decides?

Let us try an experiment. Remember the last decision you regretted. What state were you in when you took it?

The answer is almost always the same: angry, sad, panicking, in a rage, or jealous. In these states, it is not you who decides. It is the emotion (fig. 1). It wants to act straight away, and it sees the situation as bigger than it is.

Hence this rule: never take a decision when you are not calm. This way of doing things can be learned, and it happens in three steps.

1. Calm down quickly

Begin by disconnecting from the situation. Breathing is often very effective. You can also leave the place, simply explaining that you need to think clearly (fig. 2).

Leaving in this way is not running away. You leave in order to come back, with a clear head.

2. Put it in perspective

Next, bring the problem back to its real size. What seemed enormous in the emotion is often smaller when you look at it again. Reduce the intensity, and look for what is positive in this situation. There always is something.

3. Stabilise

Then bring your emotions back towards a neutral state. For this, the Δ Delta Score application has created a module, “La leçon” (the lesson). It takes you through it step by step. It first asks whether you are calm, and reminds you to disconnect if you are not yet (fig. 3).

You then write down the situation, as it happened. You note what is positive, then what is negative, honestly on both sides (fig. 4). Then you write your own conclusion.

Next, if you ask for it, the application gives you Noûma’s analysis: the situation brought back to its real size, the positive and the negative held together, the signs that were already visible in the days before, and the lesson the situation is offering you. Noûma never decides for you (fig. 5).

Your situations are kept, and they remain private. You can look at them again later, searching in them for the lesson the universe is giving you. A sheet of paper and a pen will also do: one column for the positive, one for the negative.

Delta Score

Getting to know yourself, to guide yourself better each day towards a stable mind and a stable emotional state.

You know what you do each day. But do you know what it does to you? Delta Score shows you: an accurate number for each day, what carries you, what weighs on you — and, each day, what brings you back to 7. One entry in the morning, one in the evening, and it is free.

Do not hide

One thing is very important: do not hide behind cowardice, nor behind childish behaviour. Leaving the place to think means coming back afterwards to face the situation. Hiding means never coming back. And whoever hides falls back to where they started.

Only then, when you are calm, do you decide.

M. Mischa Harmeijer, Centre EPÉU

Centre EPÉU — Château de Villereglan, Saint-Martin-de-Villereglan (Aude) · the site chat

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