For years, I made important decisions while one part of me was clearly not at peace, and I could not understand why my judgment let me down so often. The mind would be racing, or the heart would be unsettled, or the body would be exhausted, and I would push through and decide anyway. The results were exactly what you would expect. I never thought to look for the pattern.
A teaching I have come across recently has changed how I approach this. It treats a person as having five internal systems that need to be in sync before any major decision. Mind, intelligence, heart, body, soul. If one of them is out of tune, the decision will carry that noise into the world. The work is to figure out which one is loud, calm it, and only then proceed.
Each of the five has a calming factor.
(1) Knowledge calms the intelligence. When your reasoning is scattered, the answer is usually a fact you have not yet looked at.
(2) Patience calms the mind. When your mind is racing, the only thing that works is time, even if it is twenty seconds of breath.
(3) Love calms the heart. When the heart is tight or guarded, you offer warmth to whoever is asking for it, and the tightness eases.
(4) Dedication calms the body. When the body is restless or depleted, you return to your practice, your sleep, your run, your meal, and the body remembers it is taken care of.
(5) Justice calms the soul. When the soul feels something is off, you cannot reason it away. You have to do the right thing, and only then does it settle.
When all five are quiet, the decision is clean. If one of them is still loud, you have just made a reaction and called it a decision.
I am very early in this. I fail far more often than I would like to admit. Most days I notice something is out of sync only after the conversation has already gone where I knew it would go. The few times I have caught it in time, paused, used the right calming factor, and decided once the noise had settled, have changed something I did not know was changeable. I am more empathetic, more compassionate, less reactive than I was.
If a decision is in front of you today and your gut says wait, run the check before you push through. Which of the five is loud. Mind, intelligence, heart, body, or soul. Apply the calming factor that belongs to it, and decide once the noise has settled.