Clearing Your Mind for Better Choices

In Japan, there's a special trail called the Shikoku pilgrimage. It's a long walk with many temples along the way. Before entering each temple, people do a simple ritual. They wash their hands and rinse their mouths with water from a wooden ladle. This ritual is about more than just being clean. It's about preparing your mind. This idea might seem strange to many people in the West. Here, we often think that having lots of information is the key to making good decisions. We spend hours gathering data and talking to experts. But we rarely take time to prepare our minds to think clearly about all that information. In today's world, people are always connected. Emails, messages, and notifications come in all the time. This can make it hard to think properly. It's easy to confuse being busy with being effective. But when we're too busy, we can't make good decisions. Walking can be a way to clear your mind. After about 30 minutes of walking, the noise in your head starts to quiet down. Your thoughts become clearer. This is why some leaders take walks before important meetings or difficult conversations. It's like doing the temple washing ritual before entering a meeting.Leaders often have a lot of unprocessed information in their heads. This can slow down their thinking and make decisions harder. It's like having a lot of unfinished tasks piling up. To make good decisions, leaders need to find ways to clear their minds. One way to do this is to create rituals before important decisions. For example, before a big meeting, the leadership team can take time to understand the topic. They can write down the issue and think about it before the meeting. This isn't about being more productive. It's about preparing your mind to think clearly. The temple ritual also teaches another lesson. After washing your hands, you clean the ladle for the next person. This shows that making good decisions isn't just about you. It's about setting a good example for others. When leaders take time to think clearly, they show their teams that it's okay to slow down and think. In a world that values speed, taking time to think clearly is a radical act. But it might be the most important thing a leader can do.