# Flashes of Nondecisionmaking

If you crash a bicycle and cut your knee, it bleeds. You can apply pressure to the wound or otherwise aid in clotting it, but you can't fully control the blood. You can't think, "Body! I command you not to bleed!" Nor can you directly say, "I choose not to bleed" through pure will alone.

This is easy enough to understand. We don't have direct control over our blood. We can apply some measure of indirect to it -- taking aspirin might thin the blood, breathing deeply and relaxing might slow the pulse and the flow of blood slightly -- but we do not have direct and instant control over the flow of our blood.

That's our blood. It's quite a personal thing, when you think about it.

At the same time, there's a view that we have full control and choice over our actions in a given situation.

I no longer believe this to be the case.

We can staunch the flow of bleeding through applying pressure, a cloth, perhaps slowing down our pulse and bloodflow through lowering stress and deep breathing. But we can't, in the moment, command or control blood by force of will or mind alone.

Likewise, I'm starting to believe we have lots of indirect control over our patterns of action in our lives, but perhaps less control and command in individual moments.

When a person rolls out of bed, they usually do very similar things each morning. How much control or command do they have -- mentally or analytically or however you want to define it -- over these actions?

Not much, I'd say.

Yet, they have immense indirect control, similar to blood flow. If you normally lay out your clothes the night before, and you lay out running clothes instead of work clothes, and set your alarm for an hour earlier, your chances of running go up a lot. There still may be an element of choice or self-command when you decide to run or not, but it's very possible there wasn't choice or self-command available if you did not rearrange your environment with that sort of indirect pressure.

I had an experience recently that was incredibly distressing. It was strange and very unpleasant at the time, but I'm now thankful for it.

I was at a convenience store when I realized I was in the process of buying some junk food and energy drinks.

My mind recognized this, but seemingly had not so much say on what's going on. My legs were just walking the familiar convenience store aisles near my home, picking up two of this energy drink, one of that pack of peanut M&M's, and so on.

I don't know if I could have stopped the pattern and put the items back in the moment. At the time, I was shocked to realize that I was watching myself act, but I hadn't stopped and started thinking or pondering. My legs and hands were working seemingly slightly independent of myself.

At the time, it was like a bad dream, or some sort of miserable and crazy experience. I shrugged it off -- strange things happen, you know? -- but I kept thinking about it periodically.

I'd been training in meditation and impulse control a lot over the last six months, and been studying and experimenting a bit about how our minds work and cognitive psychology.

My realization now, quite a while later, is that the distressing experience at the convenience store -- "what the hell is going on here, I am seemingly not controlling my actions!"-- was actually the beginning of a flash of a greater awareness of my day-to-day life.

I believe now that we're constantly in nondecisionmaking mode. We're constantly running patterns or taking actions without conscious command or choice, similar to blood running from a cut.

This process can be managed indirectly and affected, including in the moment it's happening if we're aware of it. But oftentimes, we don't even know we're metaphorically bleeding. We're just doing things, some of them "smart", some of them stupid and harmful.

I've had more flashes of awareness, seeing myself running mechanical patterns during times I normally wouldn't have noticed them. Briefly, here and there. I've been sometimes able to radically course correct and do something entirely different. Othertimes, I try and fail to do something different. I haven't had a moment as puzzling as that first convenience store one.

There's perhaps two takeaways here. The first is that greater training in awareness and meditation can lead to "waking up" or noticing the situation you're in more often. You probably already knew that.

But the second and more important one, I think, is the idea that things that seem like choices aren't always so. We don't choose to bleed if we cut our knee. Once we realize we're bleeding, we can apply indirect pressure, de-stress, use external things like cloth or bandages, and otherwise manage the situation. We can also buy more protective clothing or improve our technique for the future, so we bleed less. But we can't simply say "Body, I command you not to bleed" nor "I choose not to bleed" if we are, in fact, bleeding.

Indirect influence and control, immense amounts. More than most people realize. Direct influence and control? Perhaps not as much as commonly believed.