First and Second Thoughts

Yesterday, I was feeling a bit peckish, so I decided to have some leftover birthday cake. By that time, there was just enough cake left for either one large piece of cake, or two small pieces. My first thought, which I now recognise as being not entirely my own, was to just eat the larger piece, but when I put it on a plate, I realised how big it was and decided to only eat half of it.
This was a small and seemingly inconsequential decision, hardly worth blogging about, expect that I'm sure that I was influenced by both positive and negative forces as I tried to decide how much cake to eat, and not in that order.

A few times, I've heard the advice to "go with your gut," to make whichever decision you thought of making first. The idea behind this reasoning is that a person's instincts are smarter than their mind. We sometimes subconsciously solve puzzles before we consciously know how we did it. If we treat every decision like a puzzle, with the solution being the best possible choice, this suggests that we can sometimes instinctively know what we should do, even before we know why that's the right decision.

But eating the whole cake wasn't the right decision. Having spent a moment reflecting on it, it's clear to me that the inclination I felt at that time was a temptation. If I had "gone with my gut" at that point, I would have foolishly given in to the vice of gluttony (which I do all too often anyway, but that's beside the point). In that case, my first instinct wasn't the right decision, and I'm not even sure it was my first instinct at all.

We are frequently tempted to do things we shouldn't. Temptations to do foolish, and sometimes evil, things enter our minds multiple times a day. Similarly, we are often encouraged by the Holy Spirit to do the right things. Thus, many of the ideas we have for what to do aren't actually our ideas at all. Our job, when it comes to decision-making, is to sort through the ideas we get, and decide which is the best one.

This task is complicated by the fact that these inspirations and temptations often come in pairs. When one spirit offers a suggestion of something we should do, the other spirit usually offers an opposite suggestion. One spirit tempted me to eat the whole piece of cake, and the other advised me to eat only half. If I was following the counsel to "go with my gut," I would have followed the counsel of the first spirit, which would have been the wrong decision to make.

Thus, we can't always count on our "first instincts" to lead us in the right direction, as it's entirely possible that the first thought to pop into one's mind as they approach a decision is actually a temptation. Perhaps a wiser course of action would be to compare the first and second thoughts you have about something, rather than just accepting the first. Since temptations and inspirations tend to come in pairs, comparing the first two thoughts you have about something should give you some idea of which thought came from where.

The first thoughts we have about things may be correct more often than not, but following our first impulses isn't always the best course of action, so rather than simply going with one's first impressions, one should compare their first two or few impressions. The inspired advice may or may not be the first thought that comes to mind, but it'll usually be one of the first few. Likewise, the enemy also likes to throw his two cents in quickly whenever there's a decision to be made, so we should be wary, since sometimes, his suggestions are the ones that come to mind first. We've been advised to never postpone a prompting, but I would suggest that you hold off on following it until you're sure that it is a prompting, and not just the first thought that pops into your mind. One's first thought may usually be the correct one, but I'd suggest at least considering the second thought as well.