How To Understand The Reasons Behind The Choices We Make

Ever wonder why we make the choices we make? For example, why do we eat a big dinner after a big lunch? Or why do we choose to behave a certain way with a friend only to regret it later?

Throughout my meditation journey, there is a regular emphasis on training the mind. Each time you sit to meditate, you learn to pay attention to what’s going on in your mind.

Without proper training, we are at the mercy of the thoughts and feelings we experience. Unfortunately, even though these are our thoughts, they aren’t always good for us. If not understood correctly, they lead to choices that don’t align with us on a higher level.

In the book, Think Like A Monk, author Jay Shetty brings to light two age-old models that help us understand why we do what we do. I found them so fascinating that I wanted to share them in this blog post.

The more we can evaluate, understand, train, and strength our relationship with the mind, the more successfully we navigate our lives and overcome challenges.

Jay Shetty

The Parent-Child Model

Jay compares our monkey mind, where our thoughts are constants shifting from one thing to another, to a child. A child cries when they don’t get what they want, ignoring what they already have. He compares the responsible and reasonable part of our mind to an adult.

According to the book, the child mind helps us to be spontaneous and creative, but when left in charge, it can lead to our downfall. On the other hand, the adult mind reminds us to assess the bigger picture, allowing us to decide on the proper action in a situation.

We need the right balance of parent and child aspects in our minds. When a child-like mind is in control, allowing us to behave unreasonably, we know that our monk minds have not been strengthened.

Jay writes that the first step to understanding our minds is simply becoming aware of the different voices inside us. Then, when we start to differentiate what we hear, it will help us make better decisions.

Driving The Chariot Of The Mind

The next model shared in the book is from the Upanishads, one of the oldest scriptures of Hinduism. Here, the mind’s working is compared to a chariot driven by five horses.

Per this analogy, the chariot is our body, the horses are our five senses, the reins are our mind, and the charioteer is our intellect.

Jay writes that when our mind is untrained, the charioteer (the intellect) is asleep on the job, so the horses (the senses) have control of the reins (mind) and lead the body wherever they please.

When left to their own devices, horses react to whatever is around them. Similarly, our senses are activated at the moment by food, money, sex, power, etc.

The chariot veers off the road toward temporary pleasure and instant gratification when the horses are in charge.

When we train our minds, the charioteer/our intellect is awake, not allowing the horses to lead the way. The charioteer uses the reins of the mind to steer the chariot along the correct route carefully.

We want to minimize the mind’s reactive tendencies, and the easiest way to do that is for the intellect to proactively steer the senses away from stimuli that could make the mind react in ways that are hard to control.

Jay Shetty

Mastering The Senses

Since our senses play a big part in our decisions, Jay talks about mastering the senses. He talks about not teasing our senses so we don’t set ourselves up to fail.

This means being conscious about where we spend our time, who we spend it with and how we spend it. Making sure our environments are set up for success, whether when trying to make the right food choices or finding the right people working towards a similar goal.

We cannot truly achieve our dreams and goals without a disciplined mind constantly guiding us in the right way. It helps us sort through the noise in our minds and ignore the harmful ones.

Training our minds is of utmost importance, along with developing the skills required to achieve our dreams. I hope you found these two analogies to help you understand our minds.

For him who has conquered the mind, the mind is the best of friends; but for one who has failed to do so, his very mind will be the greatest enemy.

Bhagavad Gita