How Meditation Improves Your Decision Making Process

When it comes to life, almost everyone can admit that they have had moments where they thought they made the right choices only to get their fingers burned a short while later. And this brings a sense of regret and feeling of not being smart enough or skilled enough to make the right decisions, which can further hurt our ability to make better choices in the future.

Meditation has been found to be a useful tool to improve our mental performance and other areas of the brain that are linked to better decision-making.

Here, we explore this subject at length to see exactly how meditation can boost our decision-making abilities and lead to a better life at work and in our personal lives.

A Better Understanding of the Brain and Decision Making

Before we see how meditation improves our decision-making abilities, we need to first understand what happens behind the scenes when we are about to make a decision.

Ideally, there are 4 steps involved in the brain (1).

The first step involves sensory inputs producing some level of stimuli which then excite several neurons in the hippocampus.

The second step follows, which also involves the production of more stimuli that is secondary which is directed in the hippocampus to meet the initial stimuli from the sensory inputs. As this happens, a neural response that is influenced by the stimuli is released which makes the initial information we are to use to make our decisions.

From there, we get to the third step, where the initial information is directed to a part of the brain called the prefrontal cortex, which then figures out which other extra information is needed and retrieves it from the hippocampus.

In the fourth step, we then have the hippocampus choosing the controlling process of the information it now has and it also communicates with the prefrontal cortex through neural wiring that helps with coming up with a favorable decision.

In essence, two major brain regions play a key role in the decision-making process, and these are the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex. Although, other parts are involved but on a minimal level.

Now consistent meditation has been found to have a positive effect on these two regions and in turn heavily influence the whole process of making choices. Let’s take a much closer look at that.

How Meditation Helps You Make Better Decisions

Studies have shown that mindfulness meditation can increase the density of the gray matter in the hippocampus, especially in the areas associated with introspection, learning, self-awareness, compassion, and memory (2).

Other studies have also concluded that the brains of meditators have larger hippocampal volumes, a higher amount of fibers that connect to the hippocampus, and larger hippocampal distances as well (3).

Meditation has also demonstrated its ability to thicken the regions of the brain such as the right anterior insula and the prefrontal cortex, which are linked to sensory processing, attention, and interoception (4).

The fact that meditation has a direct impact on the areas involved in decision-making shows that it can improve the process too if practiced in the long term.

There are also other ways meditation contributes to our making better decisions.

1. Meditation improves our empathetic concern which helps with social decisions

Meditation techniques like loving-kindness meditation, forgiveness meditation, and compassion meditation teach us how to understand others amidst our pain and aim to reduce their suffering.

When we have those brief moments of empathy towards others continuously, we develop the ability to make more considered decisions regarding our social lives which are based on understanding, empathy, and compassion, which incline us towards peace, happiness, and overall well-being.

2. Meditation enhances our cognitive control which influences reflective judgments

Various meditation styles have different impacts on our lives which also give our decision-making abilities a boost in the right direction.

For instance, some meditation styles such as breath-focused meditation and concentration meditation encourage practitioners to observe some inner experiences such as their breath, thoughts, feelings, and sensations. Others like mindfulness meditation encourage non-reactive and non-judgmental awareness.

Such meditation techniques improve cognitive control which helps reduce negative thinking patterns that happen automatically, habitual responding, and irrational behavior as well as other decision-based activities that affect us negatively.

Instead, the practice improves their level of attention and focus and allows them to take time to think considerably, reflect on the things that matter more, and come to more logical conclusions.

3. Meditation helps us regulate our emotions that reduce emotional decisions

When we are in the heat of the moment and are overwhelmed by different emotions including anger, sadness, anxiety, and even stress, it is quite easy to make rash decisions based on those emotions and end up regretting them later.

Meditation styles like mindfulness meditation help us gain control over our feelings which keep us from negativity bias, and emotionally influenced decisions and instead promote cognitive control that will help us reason well before we make the final decision.

Getting Started With Meditation For Better Decision Making

Here are some meditation techniques you should consider if you want to immerse yourself into meditation:

1. Mindfulness meditation 
2. Compassion meditation
3. Loving-kindness meditation 
4. Vipassana meditation 
5. Transcendental meditation 
6. Zen meditation
7. Walking meditation 

Conclusion

In summary, meditation can help us be in the right mental space that can help us get clarity on the issues before us and help us solve them properly by making good decisions.

The fact that meditation and mindfulness help us be calm and wakeful as it also enhances our brain in the key regions that contribute to better evaluation, processing, and reasoning, shows if we meditate consistently, we can get to boost the functions of these regions and find it less difficult to make better decisions in our lives.

We encourage you to get started with meditation and mindfulness as early as now, if you haven’t yet, so that you can get to reap its benefits. Getting started with meditation is as fairly easy as choosing your preferred meditation style, learning how it is done, and then getting started doing it for as little as 1 to 5 minutes per day.