Why Your Emotions Make Decisions Before You Do

Hi there,

Last week, I watched a grown man have a meltdown over a parking spot at Trader Joe’s.

Not a mild grumble, but a full-on tirade! He was red-faced, gesturing wildly, absolutely ready to square up to a fist fight with a Prius.

And honestly? I wasn’t surprised. That right there, ladies & gentlemen, is the beauty and elegance of our human brains at work.

Your Internal Power Struggle

Whether you realize it or not, you’re walking around with two versions of yourself stuffed into one skull:

1. The Thinking Brain: the planner, the analyst, the one who buys the spinach.

2. The Feeling Brain: the impulsive, emotional toddler who pulls fire alarms for attention.

As Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman describes it, we’re constantly toggling between a fast, emotional system and a slower, more analytical one and the fast system strikes first every time.

That man in the parking lot was pure Feeling Brain.

Meanwhile, his Thinking Brain was probably in the backseat whispering, “Sir… please… we talked about this…”

And guess who wins most days? Not the sensible adult with clipboard and to-do list. But the toddler who just discovered the sheer thrill of not giving a single damn.

Why Discipline & Willpower Fall Short

The biggest misunderstanding in the self-help world is this belief that discipline is the fix for everything. If discipline actually worked the way Instagram thinks it does, we’d all:

- wake up early & hydrate like camels
- meditate over our 6-pack navels
- and have inboxes at zero instead of 6,120 unread emails (don’t lie)

Please.

Researchers have been saying this for years: willpower isn’t a reliable regulation tool. Studies show willpower fades fast and is very limited.

And yet, so many of us still try to operate life by white knuckling through it or scolding the toddler inside us:

“You shouldn’t be tired.”
“You shouldn’t want to procrastinate.”
“You shouldn’t feel this way.”

Let me tell you something as a recovering professional “Should-er”: the little tyrant in your head doesn’t care about your ‘shoulds.’

You Can’t Outsmart Biology

I once worked with a behavioral psychologist who bribed his kids with sticker charts. They’d practically shove their tiny child fingers into grimy cup holders to excavate fossilized crumbs if it meant earning a holographic unicorn.

Adults like to pretend we’re different.

But we’re not.

The only real difference between children and adults is the sophistication of our excuses.

Your Feeling Brain wants stimulation, novelty, reward, dopamine, and comfort.

It does not care about: long-term goals, 10-year plans, or the fact that you signed up for a 6AM Pilates class

You can’t shame it into cooperating. You can’t lecture it into logic. You definitely can’t “discipline” it into submission.

But you can negotiate with it.

Why Negotiation Beats Discipline

Here’s the part most people never get taught:

You don’t fight the Feeling Brain. You leverage it.

You use what it wants to get what you want.

The thing is that emotions drive the majority of our decisions and logic only comes in after the fact to rationalize them. So, you don’t change your life by overpowering your emotions. You change it by rerouting them.

This looks like:

• “You can play your favorite Bad Bunny playlist…but only while you clean the kitchen.”

• “You can binge that Netflix show… but not until we walk around the block once.”

• “You can have the cookie… but only after you finish your protein & vegetables.”

Call it bribery, pairing, or emotional jiu-jitsu. Whatever you call it, it works.

Because your Feeling Brain doesn’t respond to discipline. If it did, you wouldn’t own 6 water bottles and drink from none of them.

And none of this is about demonizing the Feeling Brain. As neuroscientist António Damásio found, people who lose access to emotional processing can’t make effective decisions. Without emotion, logic has nothing to prioritize.

How to Start Taming Your Tiny Tyrant

Here’s the simple, elegant system that works:

1. Identify what your Feeling Brain wants.

Stimulation? Comfort? Excitement? Novelty? Rest? Sugar? Validation?

Be honest. It already knows.

2. Pair it with something your Thinking Brain wants.

Start small. One micro-task.

“You can have ___, but only while/after ___.”

That’s it.

3. Keep the negotiation playful, not punitive.

You’re redirecting a toddler with scissors, not disciplining a Navy SEAL.

READER POLL

Final Thought

Most people fail because they use all their strength pretending they don’t have weaknesses.

They burn out trying to be “disciplined” instead of designing systems that work with their actual wiring.

But the truth is not that you lack willpower. It’s that you’ve been using the wrong tool.

So, the next time you feel yourself resisting, procrastinating, spiraling, or melting down over metaphorical parking spots…

Pause. Don’t shame yourself. Don’t try to “power through.”

Just ask:

“What does my tiny tyrant want… and how can I use that to get what I want?”

Your life gets easier, your habits get steadier, and you finally stop losing arguments to the four-year-old that goes everywhere with you.

See you next week,

Shakila

P.S. Here’s the results of last week’s poll.