Shift Your Mental Spotlight

We make thousands of decisions every day. It’s a natural part of life and decision making rarely is a conscious decision.

Even when we think we’re making a concerted effort to make a decision, there’s other factors at play. We’re not looking for the best answer. We’re looking for the answer that best fits our preconceived notions.

Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel Prize winner, put it in these terms

We give too much weight to the information that’s right in front of us, while failing to consider the information that’s just offstage.

Have you discovered this to be true?

Here’s what I’ve discovered. We’ve got a confirmation bias when decisions pop up in life. And our mental spotlight shifts to focus on one or two solutions.

The mental spotlight is so narrow that we miss out on the many other options that are available to us. Let’s walk through a few scenarios.