How To Make Better Decisions Under Stress with Dr Sabrina Cohen-Hatton #101
Dr. Sabrina Cohen-Hatton, a Chief Fire Officer and psychologist with a PhD in behavioral neuroscience, shares her journey from homelessness to revolutionizing decision-making under pressure. She discusses how trauma built resilience and empathy, and introduces practical techniques for better choices in stressful situations.
Deep Dive Analysis
17 Topic Outline
Dr. Sabrina Cohen-Hatton's Background and Journey
Homelessness as a Teenager and its Impact
Building Resilience from Trauma and Adversity
Overcoming Challenges in the Fire Service
Controlling Your Response to Life's Difficulties
Stress and Decision-Making as a Firefighter
Developing a Rapid Decision-Making Framework
Applying the Framework in Everyday Life
National Impact and Recognition of Research
Dealing with Imposter Syndrome and Vulnerability
Social Mobility and Unconscious Bias
Personal Impact of Trauma and Gratitude Practice
Balancing Intuition with Protocols in Decision-Making
Making Difficult 'Least Worst' Decisions
The Power of Language: 'Experiencing Homelessness'
Addressing Mental Health in Emergency Services
Embracing Failure for Growth and Learning
5 Key Concepts
Intuitive Gut Decisions
These are instant responses based on past experiences, learned associations, and memories, often made below the level of consciousness. They serve as mental shortcuts, helping individuals make quick decisions in complex and dynamically moving environments.
Decision-Making Under Pressure
When experiencing stress, the brain's processing capacity is reduced, making it harder to synthesize information, create a coherent mental map, or make effective decisions. This highlights the need for strategies to manage stress's impact on cognitive function.
Unconscious Bias (Social Class)
This refers to making judgments about individuals based on factors like their accent, clothing, or perceived economic status, rather than their actual potential. Such biases can unfairly close down opportunities for people, regardless of their capabilities.
Negativity Bias
Humans have an inherent tendency to focus on negative experiences, a trait that historically aided survival. However, in modern life, this bias can work against us, making practices like gratitude important for shifting focus towards positives.
Homelessness as an Experience
This is a conscious linguistic choice to describe homelessness as a transient situation someone is going through, rather than a defining identity. This framing helps individuals move beyond the situation without the burden of a fixed label or societal judgment.
7 Questions Answered
Homelessness is described as a dehumanizing experience where people are often treated as less than human, leading to physical and emotional abuse, and can become a perceived identity rather than a temporary situation.
Yes, trauma can build resilience, helping individuals empathize with others and realize they are stronger than they think, providing a drive to overcome future adversities.
Stress consumes the brain's processing capacity, making it harder to synthesize information, form a clear mental map, and make effective decisions.
Approximately 80% of decisions made in high-pressure incidents are intuitive gut decisions, based on past experiences and learned associations, while 20% are analytical.
By creating a brief mental space to pause and reflect, and by using a rapid mental checklist to connect immediate responses to a bigger plan, anticipate outcomes, and weigh benefits against risks.
Framing it as an experience acknowledges its transient nature, preventing it from becoming a defining identity that can hinder social mobility and perpetuate judgment.
Embracing failure allows for greater learning and growth than success, as one has to fight harder to overcome it. Additionally, leaders who can't own their failures may not be trusted with successes.
14 Actionable Insights
1. Control Your Response to Adversity
Actively choose how you respond to disappointment, failure, or unfair situations by controlling your actions, words, and thoughts, as this is within your power, even if emotional reactions are not a choice.
2. Embrace and Own Failure
Embrace failure with the same commitment as success, as you learn more from it; own your failures without embarrassment or shame, which builds trust and demonstrates ethical leadership.
3. Use Rapid Decision Checklist
When making decisions under pressure, quickly ask yourself: ‘What am I trying to achieve?’, ‘What do I expect to happen?’, and ‘How does the benefit outweigh the risk?’ This helps connect instant responses to the bigger picture and project outcomes without slowing down decision-making.
4. Create Thinking Space
When pressured for an instant decision, step back to create space for thought (e.g., take a walk, ask for time to reflect) to reduce stress and increase your processing capacity for better choices.
5. Daily Gratitude & Kindness
Counter fears and negativity bias by practicing gratitude and kindness daily; before bed, list three things you are grateful for, recount something happy, and share a random act of kindness you performed.
6. Use Empowering Language
Consciously choose language that frames difficult situations (e.g., homelessness, mental health issues) as transient experiences rather than fixed identities, which helps in moving beyond challenges and avoiding self-labeling.
7. Encourage Emotional Expression
Challenge societal norms that suppress emotions (e.g., ‘man up’) and encourage open expression, especially in men and boys, to prevent extreme stress and mental health problems.
8. Challenge Unconscious Bias
Actively challenge unconscious biases, particularly those based on social class or economic status, to ensure fair opportunities for all individuals regardless of their background or presentation.
9. Believe in Your Potential
Cultivate a belief in your own potential and worthiness to pursue opportunities, countering any negative inner narratives that may stem from past judgments or experiences.
10. Practice Decision Checklist
Consistently practice the three-question decision checklist to make it a primed, unconscious response, allowing you to apply it proficiently and automatically without slowing down your decision-making.
11. Practice for Stressful Situations
Engage in practice scenarios for intensely stressful situations to reduce the actual stress experienced during real events, enabling a more effective and better response.
12. Practice Kindness
Be kind to others, especially when encountering disruptive individuals, as you never know the difficult experiences they may have faced, fostering empathy and positive interactions.
13. Daily Reflection Practice
Engage in a daily reflection practice, such as at dinnertime, by sharing what you did to make someone else happy, what someone else did to make you happy, and what you learned that day.
14. Experiment with New Ideas
If an idea appeals to you, give it a try (‘suck it and see’) even if skeptical, as there is little to lose by experimenting with new approaches in your life.
8 Key Quotes
Bad things are going to happen to you in life. Whoever you are, wherever you are, whatever you experience, you're going to have disappointment. You're going to have failure. Things will happen that just aren't fair. That's life. You can't control that. But what you can control is how you respond to that.
Sabrina Cohen-Hatton
If someone goes to war with their demons, it's everyone around them that gets hit by the shrapnel.
Sabrina Cohen-Hatton
If you can be anything, I would say just be kind.
Sabrina Cohen-Hatton
Everyone is stronger than they originally think that they are. Every single one of us.
Sabrina Cohen-Hatton
My grandmother was a Moroccan Jew and her and my grandfather had to escape Morocco after a pogrom where she was attacked with a machete for the crime of being Jewish and she was left for dead. And when my grandfather went to collect her body, he had to go through this pile of mutilated corpses to find her. And when he pulled her out, she gasped for air. She was still alive and she survived.
Sabrina Cohen-Hatton
Sometimes the best decisions still have terrible outcomes. Sometimes you still have to pick the least worst option.
Sabrina Cohen-Hatton
Embrace failure with as much commitment as you embrace success.
Sabrina Cohen-Hatton
If I've got people around me that can't own their failure, I can't trust them not to claim a success that's not theirs.
Sabrina Cohen-Hatton
2 Protocols
Rapid Decision-Making Checklist (Fire Service)
Sabrina Cohen-Hatton- What am I trying to achieve? (Connect instant response to the big picture/goal)
- What do I expect to happen? (Raise situational awareness, project what might happen)
- How does the benefit outweigh the risk? (Evaluate the action's worth)
Family Gratitude and Kindness Practice
Sabrina Cohen-Hatton- Share three things you are grateful for.
- Talk about something that made you really happy that day.
- Share a random act of kindness you performed or observed.