Decision Making as a Mind, Body, and Spirit Process

When life begins to stabilize, the nature of decision-making changes. The immediate urgency to fix what is broken recedes, and with it the constant pressure to optimize, repair, or respond. Many people expect that stabilization will naturally lead to clarity or forward momentum. Instead, they often find themselves calm but uncertain, functional yet unfulfilled, capable but directionless. The challenge at this stage is no longer crisis management. It is learning how to make decisions that remain aligned over time.

In these quieter periods, decision making becomes one of the most influential drivers of long-term wellbeing. Choices are no longer made under the adrenaline of necessity, but under the subtler conditions of daily life. Yet, our decision-making process doesn’t always seem clear, or we repeat patterns without understanding why. Others may appear reasonable on paper but gradually erode energy, motivation, or meaning. This is because decisions are so much more than just a mental task.

Decision Making Beyond Cognition Alone

Decision making is often framed as a process of logic, reasoning, and conscious evaluation. While these elements are essential, they represent only part of how humans choose. Research across neuroscience and psychology demonstrates that decisions emerge from integrated systems that include emotional state, physical condition, and internal bodily signals. These systems continuously inform how options are perceived, weighed, and acted upon.

This integrated view helps explain why decisions that appear rational can still feel misaligned or difficult to sustain. When internal regulatory systems are strained, cognitive effort alone is insufficient to maintain consistency. Individuals may abandon decisions that were intellectually sound because those decisions placed excessive demands on emotional or physiological resources. Decision quality, therefore, reflects the condition of the whole organism rather than the strength of will or clarity of thought in isolation.

Interoception and the Body’s Contribution to Choice

One of the primary mechanisms through which the body contributes to decision making is interoception. Interoception refers to the nervous system’s ability to sense and interpret internal physiological signals such as heart rate, breathing, tension, fatigue, and visceral sensations. Critchley and Garfinkel (2017) describe interoception as foundational to emotional awareness and subjective experience. These internal signals shape judgments about safety, effort, and motivation long before conscious reasoning is engaged.

Khalsa et al. (2018) further demonstrate that interoceptive processes play a central role in mental health and self-regulation. Their work shows that bodily awareness influences attention, emotional appraisal, and behavioral flexibility. When interoceptive signaling is disrupted, muted, or ignored, decision-making becomes more reactive. Individuals are more likely to prioritize short-term relief over long-term alignment, even when they understand the consequences intellectually.

Recent computational models reinforce this perspective. Allen, Friston, and Seth (2022) describe decision-making as a form of predictive inference in which the brain integrates sensory information, including bodily signals, to guide perception and action. From this view, sensations such as fatigue, discomfort, or tension are not distractions. They are data. When these signals are consistently overridden, decisions lose coherence and become increasingly costly to maintain.

Diet, Brain Function, and Decision Capacity

Nutrition also plays a significant role in shaping the internal conditions under which decisions are made. Nutritional neuroscience has established that dietary intake influences synaptic plasticity, neurotransmitter synthesis, and neuronal resilience, all of which are critical for learning, memory, and executive function (Gómez Pinilla, 2008). When nutritional quality is poor or metabolic signaling is impaired, cognitive flexibility and emotional regulation decline.

Clinical evidence supports this relationship. Jacka et al. (2017) demonstrated that dietary improvement led to significant reductions in depressive symptoms among adults with major depression. Because mood and emotional regulation directly affect attention, motivation, and judgment, these findings suggest that diet shapes the cognitive and emotional environment in which decisions occur, not merely long-term physical health outcomes.

Population level data further strengthen this link. Lane et al. (2022) found that higher consumption of ultra processed foods was associated with poorer mental health outcomes, including increased rates of depression and anxiety. These conditions narrow attentional focus and increase emotional reactivity, directly impairing decision making capacity. Diet therefore functions as an active determinant of decision quality rather than a background lifestyle factor.

From a longevity and metabolic perspective, Sinclair (2023) emphasizes that nutritional inputs influence cellular energy regulation, inflammatory signaling, and biological aging pathways. Although his work focuses on lifespan and healthspan, the implications extend to decision making. When metabolic systems are dysregulated, cognitive endurance, emotional stability, and stress tolerance diminish, reducing the ability to make sustained, value aligned choices.

Stress, Physiology, and Decision Coherence

Stress further shapes the internal landscape in which decisions are made. Epel et al. (2018) describe stress as a multilevel process involving psychological appraisal, physiological response, and behavioral adaptation. Chronic stress disrupts regulatory systems that support emotional balance and cognitive flexibility, leading decisions to feel urgent, constrained, or reactive even in objectively stable circumstances.

Importantly, the effects of stress do not end when the stressor resolves. Physiological patterns established under chronic stress can persist, influencing perception and judgment long after external pressure has diminished. As a result, individuals may continue to make decisions oriented toward short term safety rather than long term coherence, even when risk is no longer present.

Naming an Integrated Process: Mind, Body, and Spirit

Many people recognize the experience of making decisions that feel mentally reasonable but physically exhausting, or emotionally appealing but misaligned with deeply held values. These moments are often described as indecision or internal conflict. From a systems perspective, they reflect signals arising from different domains that have not yet been integrated.

At Sage Vida, this integrated signal set is referred to as Mind, Body, and Spirit. This framework is not a belief system or treatment protocol. It is a practical lens for recognizing whether decisions support or undermine overall coherence. The mind reflects clarity, reasoning, and emotional regulation. The body reflects energy availability, stress response, and physiological sustainability. The spirit reflects values, meaning, and internal alignment. Decisions that privilege one domain at the expense of the others may succeed temporarily but tend to require correction or recovery over time.

Discernment After Urgency

When urgency recedes, discernment becomes more important than action. Decision making at this stage is not about doing more or exerting greater effort. It is about choosing in ways that sustain the whole system. For individuals who have already stabilized, this shift represents a natural progression away from problem solving and toward coherence. Decisions made from this place tend to require less justification, less recovery, and less internal negotiation. Over time, they support durable wellbeing without renewed pressure for change.

References

Allen, M., Friston, K. J., & Seth, A. K. (2022). A tale of two densities: Active inference is enactive inference. PLOS Computational Biology, 18(5), e1010490. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1010490

Critchley, H. D., & Garfinkel, S. N. (2017). Interoception and emotion. Current Opinion in Psychology, 17, 7–14. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2017.04.020

Epel, E. S., Crosswell, A. D., Mayer, S. E., Prather, A. A., Slavich, G. M., Puterman, E., & Mendes, W. B. (2018). More than a feeling: A unified view of stress measurement for population science. Frontiers in Neuroendocrinology, 49, 146–169. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.yfrne.2018.03.001

Gómez Pinilla, F. (2008). Brain foods: The effects of nutrients on brain function. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 9(7), 568–578. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn2421

Jacka, F. N., O’Neil, A., Opie, R., Itsiopoulos, C., Cotton, S., Mohebbi, M., Castle, D., Dash, S., Mihalopoulos, C., Chatterton, M. L., Brazionis, L., Dean, O. M., Hodge, A. M., & Berk, M. (2017). A randomized controlled trial of dietary improvement for adults with major depression (the SMILES trial). BMC Medicine, 15(1), 23. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12916-017-0791-y

Khalsa, S. S., Adolphs, R., Cameron, O. G., Critchley, H. D., Davenport, P. W., Feinstein, J. S., Feusner, J. D., Garfinkel, S. N., Lane, R. D., Mehling, W. E., Meuret, A. E., Nemeroff, C. B., Oppenheimer, S., Petzschner, F. H., Pollatos, O., Rhudy, J. L., Schramm, L. P., Simmons, W. K., Stein, M. B., Stephan, K. E., & Interoception Summit 2016 participants. (2018). Interoception and mental health: A roadmap. Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, 3(6), 501–513. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bpsc.2017.12.004

Lane, M. M., Gamage, E., Travica, N., Dissanayaka, T., Ashtree, D. N., Gauci, S., Lotfaliany, M., O’Neil, A., Jacka, F. N., & Marx, W. (2022). Ultra processed food consumption and mental health: A systematic review and meta analysis of observational studies. Nutrients, 14(13), 2568. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu14132568

Sinclair, D. A. (2023). Lifespan: Why we age and why we do not have to. Atria Books.