Your middle name is Solomon.

Your namesake, according to the bible, was leader of the Jewish Kingdom renowned for his wisdom and sage advice to others. Some would travel weeks just to seek his counsel.

However, as the story goes, Solomon had a penchant for the ladies. Whilst trying to juggle his 700 wives and succumbing to his insatiable desire for ‘foreign women of foreign lands’, he made some pretty disastrous decisions that preceded his (and his Kingdom’s) eventual demise.

‘Solomon’s Paradox’ describes the surprising human phenomenon of being able to give sound advice to others, whilst simultaneously struggling to choose the right path for ourselves.

The root cause is our emotions getting in the way and clouding our judgement.

When we face a dilemna, our two brains, the rational and emotional, internally compete to provide us with the solution. It becomes almost impossible to tell who’s steering the ship, and how we should ultimately act. All of a sudden our insecurities, our primal urges, our low self esteem, or our childhood trauma starts to weigh in on our decision making.

The key is to keep remembering your middle name, and harness the power of a simple cognitive trick that allows our emotional brain to stand down:

Rather than continuing to ruminate on what you should do in a certain situation, instead imagine a friend confiding in you the same problem, and urging you to give them your honest advice.

The emotional fog will lift Reg, and the subsequent advice to ‘your friend’ you give will not only often be obvious, but also rooted in logic.