70% of everything we do is driven by emotion - Here are the most common emotions driving us right now:
Bottom Line: Even if you think you're less emotionally driven, more pragmatic, than most - you're still almost certainly mostly driven by your emotions in your day-to-day life. It's one of life's potentially inconvenient realities. Gallup's research overtime has found that about 70% of all decisions we make in life are more emotionally based than not. If you want to argue to the contrary do you almost always eat something you at least generally enjoy or whatever would be most healthy? Do you drive the most practical possible vehicle or something you at least somewhat enjoy. Are you a sports fan (that's a whole interesting physiological conversation)?
Three years into research on this topic Gallup has been able to pinpoint a lot of information about us and folks from around the world based on our emotional state of mind. For example:
- Greeks are the most stressed out people sampled in the world with 67% identifying
- 70% of all of us around the world had at least one positive moment we remember from yesterday
- The overall most negative people in the world currently are Iraqis (not surprising given the rise of ISIS until recently)
Anyway, I found it notable that around the world, across the spectrum, there is still generally good that happens during the course of every day. Psychologists have long identified that we're generally more likely to focus on the negatives as compared to the positives - again it's emotional human behavior - but when you compare our daily lives and what we're fortunate to retain as compared to say, Iraqis, or even those living in severe financial and political duress in Greece - we probably have a lot to be thankful for and to truly appreciate. As long as we're most likely to be emotional, we can choose to spend a little more time appreciating what's good in our lives one day at a time. Because if you're asked to think about those positive moments - there are probably more than we'd otherwise appreciate.