How Do You Stay Connected to Yourself?

When Your Head Says Yes, But Your Heart Says No

When we’re born, our hearts are fully wired to our brains. I’m sure of that. We cry when we’re hungry. We cry when we’re mad. Then we learn about things like “good behavior,” and “inside voices.” Then our brains start thinking about where, when, and how to follow our feelings and when, where, and how to over-rule them.

Figuring out the which is what and where is a complicated burden, so for many of us it becomes easier to choose one — usually the brain — as the default. How many times have you heard someone say, “Use your head. What were you thinking?” Or we might choose a brain default for business and a heart default for social situations.

Seriously, that’s a dis-connection. It’s as if we turn off part of our input and output systems most of the time we’re living.

Inner conflict like that can leave us with no certain direction and huge pent up emotion.
It’s hard to take action when you don’t where you’re going.

What if we re-connected ourselves to rewire our brains to our hearts — our thoughts to our feelings? It’s not such an outrageous idea. Getting out of our heads to consider situations often gives us perspective into the other people we’re seeing, how they might be feeling, even when to listen.

Being too much in our heads puts our focus on the work not the people doing it, on the product or service not the people who will use it. Being too much in our hearts gets us lost in a labyrinth of feelings without the ability to see clarity of logical reasoning.

But together head and heart can fill out the picture with meaning.

When you’re overthinking, ask yourself what makes me feel this is so important?
When you’re filled with huge feelings, ask yourself why you’re so emotionally invested?
Then check in with your hands and your feet to see which direction they seem to be recommending.

Don’t respond or react until you’ve rewired, reconnected, and rebalanced your view of the situation.