Mood, The Decision Influencer

how mood influences our decision making 

Click on the LINK above to read the whole article (!)

My dear reader,

this past week I received another newsletter from Madison, Wisconsin (USA) about being MINDFUL.  The female author Sharon Begley writes about our moods and how it affects us, positively and negatively.  She also explains why we have moods and how it serves us!

Honestly:  did you ever wonder?
So far, I didn´t …. until I was reading her post.

For you, I took the excerpt just about Decision Making from her article, as follows:

….. and that can have powerful consequences. When people feel happy, enthusiastic, or excited they tend to take more risks, including financial ones.
Feeling down, by contrast, makes us more likely to choose the safe bet.  (Keep that in mind next time you have to make decisions about investing for retirement or setting aside money for medical expenses.)

If things turn out better than expected, the dopamine hit and the resulting good mood encourage us to try for more of it. For instance, making surprise gains in the stock market improves a trader’s mood, leading her to take more risks, thereby taking advantage of a rising market.
The reverse is also true:  Sustaining a loss triggers negative emotions; those make us back away, protecting us from worse to come.  In both cases mood pushed us toward the optimal behavior.

As a take-away for today, I´d like to remind you of being mindful and awake when you´re in a certain mood ready for a decision and suddenly “running into” a reaction of your mood for another decision!  STOP!

BE A DECISION MAKER.  BECOME OUTSTANDING.

rita jaskolla – Leadership Architect –