An invisible mistake we often make in our lives is to subconsciously assume that we come to any decision from a neutral place.

Have you noticed that? We feel like we start with kind of no decision.

But that's not the case at all.

We are always predetermined in a certain direction. We come into new decisions with the weight already heavy on one side of the scale.

And from my observations in 15 plus years of working in psychology most of us have a default setting of the path of least resistance. What this means is anytime we go into a potential decision, we've already decided to look for the easy way out, the quick fix, and the instant gratification.

When it comes to choosing what to eat, we’re already leaning toward quick, easy and delicious (i.e. probably unhealthy). When it comes to socializing, we’re already leaning toward comfort and away from anxiety (i.e. stay in the same old rut). When it comes to career decisions, we’ll feel lethargic about change and automatically consider new things be “risky” without assessing the statistics.

So most of our decision-making is to either go with that lazy default or push ourselves to choose something else. We're not going in neutral. We're not going in at zero.

If you're aware of this, you'll realize you can't trust your default. You can't just unconsciously or mindlessly make decisions or believe the first reaction your brain has because it's going to choose the quick fix, which means...

Long term suffering.

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