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Knowing when to follow your heart vs your mind
By Scott Fusco | July 25, 2007
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Here I want to talk about the value in both following your intuition (i.e. “leading from your heart”) and following a specific mind-based strategy (i.e. “leading from your mind) for accomplishing a goal.
By “leading from your heart” I simply mean following your intuition, your gut, your instincts, whatever you want to call it. It is following whatever feels right to you in that moment in time.
On the other hand, by “leading from your mind” I am referring to the mental process of developing a strategy within your mind, not your heart.
Your heart simply tells you if something feels right, your mind doesn’t have that ability. However, your mind has other abilities which we will explore later.
Both are valuable tools. The question is, how do we know when to use each one? This post will both demonstrate the strengths and weaknesses of both tools and provide common sense suggestions that will help you decide when to use each one.
Knowing when to use each decision making tool largely comes down to your values and what you are trying to accomplish. It is important for me to say that neither modus operandi is “superior” in and of itself. You are not a better person if you only lead from your heart. This isn’t about judging. This is about gaining awareness of your values and priorities and adjusting your decision making to be congruent with that.
Generally speaking, for most people it will make much more sense to lead from their mind in their business lives. This is primarily because the priorities of most businesses (maximizing profits, niche marketing, strategic planning, etc.) are best accomplished from strategies that are developed from your mind.
On the other hand, leading from your heart will make your life more peaceful and fulfilling. Generally speaking, it is the superior choice for your personal life if things like peace, purpose, fulfillment, and inspiration are important to you.
You can, of course, live your life however you want. Most spiritual teachers live their lives exclusively from their heart. Many business leaders do the opposite. What I am promoting here is to learn and understand both and figure out what works best for you based around your values and what you are trying to accomplish. For example, if you are going through a period of time where you are feeling totally burned out, then you would benefit from listening to your heart which is telling you to slow down and take a break. Listening to your body in this way would help bring you back in balance and recharge your batteries.
If, on the other hand, you are feeling very personally fulfilled but don’t have (for example) much income, then you would benefit from learning how to create business strategies from your mind.
So hopefully now you have a general idea of what it means to lead from your heart/mind and a general idea of where you might apply these different tools in your life. The rest of this post will go into more detail on both of these concepts:
In my experience, my mind is better at developing a plan that has a specific goal (such as maximizing profits or marketing to a specific audience or developing a niche, and so on). Whenever I have a goal, my mind will be able to develop a strategy that will get me there as quickly as possible.
But have you ever designed a plan only to get out of the planning phase and into the implementation phase and then the day-to-day execution of the plan doesn’t work out for whatever reason (it could be that the implementation was too boring or that it was too borderline ethically, etc.)?
This has happened to me many times. In these cases, the process of implementation was not aligned enough with my values to motivate me to implement the plan on a consistent basis. I was likely completely unaware of these values when I created the plan. But now that these previously unaware-of values are not being satisfied, I do not have the energy or desire to continue along this path.
And the result of this process is a lot of frustration and wasted time. And this is the chief pitfall of leading from your mind - it knows what is best for you in ideal case scenarios. Your mind is perfect for developing an implementation plan that requires the discipline of a robot. But you are not a robot.
Unlike robots, you have bad days. When you create a plan from your mind, do you consider all of the variables that need to be in place for you to feel motivated enough to want to work at this not only on your best days but also when you’re not at your best? If you don’t, then your plan has a much higher chance of failing.
When you develop a plan from your mind, you need to be aware that the natural inclination is to develop a plan that follows the straightest, most efficient path. A plan developed in this manner is single-minded toward accomplishing whatever your goal is, irregardless of everything and everyone else. Because you are being so single-minded, you can almost guarantee that everything else in your life will suffer until you have accomplished your goal. And that means everything else gets pushed aside - your other desires, your relationships, your social life, your health, etc.
Another potential problem with implementing a plan from your mind is that it requires an incredible amount of discipline and motivation. What you are basically telling yourself is: “Nothing else matters right now except accomplishing this goal of mine.” Now that may be true in ideal case scenarios, but throughout any given day, you likely feel many different needs – the need for food, social interaction, pleasure, a break, etc.
There aren’t many people that can literally put their entire life on hold while focusing on a goal. If you are one of those people, then good for you. But if you aren’t one of those people, then when you plan for a goal you want to strive to design the implementation process to include not only what you want to accomplish but also some things that are in alignment with your values and make you feel good. If you do this, then you will be able to keep yourself grounded enough to feel motivated to work on your goal without compromising the rest of your life.
So the key for you, if you are one of these people, is to strike more of a balance between doing the things that you need to do to accomplish your goal and doing things that you enjoy.
I’d like now to talk a little bit about leading from your heart. I wrote a lot about this topic already in my post about following your intuition.
I will expand on that post a little bit here to say that my heart’s best strength is that it knows much better than my mind what feels right to me in this moment in time. And by knowing what “feels right”, my heart really is like a supercomputer that is completely conscious of my prioritized values at all times. Whether or not I am mentally conscious of my values, my heart can always be used as a tool that tells me whether or not a certain choice reflects my values. All I have to do is observe my emotions when implementing a task. How do I feel about this? Does this feel right? If it doesn’t feel right, then something isn’t in alignment with my values and needs to be adjusted.
So I can use my heart as a sort of barometer that, when listened to and followed, will consistently tell me what to do in that moment in time. So sometimes my heart might tell me to work on my business or do some writing, and if I follow that urge then I will feel good. Other times my heart may tell me to reach out for social interaction. Again, providing that I listen to my urge, I will feel good.
The beauty of listening to your heart is that you are never fighting what you want to do – you are just surrendering to it. And as a result, there is way less resistance in your life. You are no longer fighting yourself over doing what you perceive you should be doing versus what your body and heart know you want to be doing.
This is the chief reason why people that live their lives this way experience the natural byproducts of removing all of the internal resistance from their lives – that is, always feeling great, inspired, happy, fulfilled and on purpose.
So in terms of figuring out when to use your heart versus your mind, you need to recognize the strengths and weakness of both of these tools. Your heart knows what is best for you in any moment in time, but it knows nothing about the worlds of marketing, law, or strategy. It knows nothing about maximizing or optimizing. But it does know, better than you are consciously aware of, what your body needs, what your emotional health needs, etc. And sometimes that is much more important than knowing how to optimize something.
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Related Posts:
- A how-to guide to following your intuition
- Thinking big vs. Thinking small
- How negative thoughts spiral out of control
- How thoughts create reality
- How often do you take a break? Are you sure?
Topics: Awareness-Consciousness, Business-Career, Decision Making, Emotional Intelligence, Inspiration, Intuition, Logic-Intelligence, Motivation, Personal Development, Productivity, Shifts, Time Management |
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A good reminder! It drives me to keep my heart and brain connected.
Love & Gratitude,
Posted by: Tina Su on October 25th, 2007 at 6:34 pmTina Su
Think Simple. Be Decisive.
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