How can I tell if I'm just rationalizing a decision?

Rabbi Landau teaches that the key is to catch yourself in “the moment between the emotion and the logical story you build around it.” Right there, ask whether this is actually true, or whether it is your heart dressed up with logic.

The goal isn't to stop feeling. Feelings come first in every decision, and the smarter you are, the more airtight the explanation sounds. So a convincing explanation, on its own, proves nothing.

In A Soul at Peace, he describes this as a small gap, maybe a second long, between the first rise of a feeling and the moment the mind has built a full, convincing story. That gap is where awareness begins. His exercise there: once today, when you notice yourself explaining a decision your heart already made, stop and ask, “What did my heart want here, before my mind showed up?”

Going deeper: Rabbi Landau's teaching, level by level

Surface claim

Rationalizing is caught in the gap between feeling and explanation.

Deepest human truth

Knowing you are emotional with good explanations is the beginning of thinking.

More questions from this teaching

• Are my decisions really driven by logic or by emotion?