- "The sailor cannot see the north / but knows the needle can."
- "If you cannot decide, the answer is no."
- "The hardest 'no' to identify is the one closest to a 'yes'."
- "The golden rule of decision making is that the person making the decision needs to define the problem."
- "Is there another way? Resist 'two choices' tendency."
- "Choose the path that leaves you more equanimous in the long term."
- "If you have two equally difficult paths, choose the one more painful in the short term."
- "All of life is a wager."
- "Does this choice enlarge me or diminish me?"
- "There are no solutions. There are only tradeoffs."
- "A simple heuristic to ask yourself: Is this choice going to make the future easier or harder?"
- "Whatever health and wholeness is, it surely involves aligning our outer choices with our inner reality. When the path we are on is right for our souls, the energy is there. When what we are doing is wrong for us, we can temporarily mobilize energy in service to goals, and often we must, but in time such forced mobilization leads to irritability, anger, burnout, and symptoms of all kinds. When what we are doing is right for us, the feeling function supports us. That is, our autonomous feeling system supports rather than opposes our choices. The support of this autonomous evaluative process confirms the rightness of our choices, even when those around us do not endorse them. When we are doing what is right for us, we will feel a sense of purpose, meaning, and satisfaction, and that communicates itself to others also."
- “Our judgment is not limited as much by knowledge as it is by attitude.”
- "I don’t want to be a great-problem-solver. I want to avoid problems – prevent them from happening and doing right from the beginning."
- "The most difficult challenge in decision-making is executing a decision you do not want to do."
- "Removing '7' gives you far better signal on everything. '7' is the most common default and tells you little; conversely, '6' is barely passing and '8' is a strong endorsement."
- "Amateurs think in absolutes. Professionals think in probabilities."
- “I’m not totally clear what a yes in the gut means, but I do know what a no feels like.”
- “When in doubt, there is no doubt.”
- "What seems like the fast way in the moment is the long way in the end. In an effort to go faster and outsmart the process we turn to shortcuts, cut corners, and engage in short-term behavior. While it might seem like we're going faster, these tiny debts accumulate into an anchor. Short-term actions eventually become long-term weights."
- “Faced with a choice, choose anxiety for it is always developmental, while depression is regressive.”