We’ve all heard the conflicting advice.
Some say, “Follow your heart.”
Others say, “Use your head.”
Which is better? Head or heart?
Should I decide based on intellectual processes full of data and logical calculations?
Or should I make decisions based on how I feel?
The answer is both!
The head and heart are equally valuable sources of intelligence that are meant to inform each other.
Preferring one of them at the expense of the other is dangerous.
Look at the path of preferring your head at the expense of your heart…
It starts with ignoring your needs and desires because identifying them within the sea of emotion and obligation is too strange, scary, and difficult.
That leads to living a life you “should” live instead of the life that you want to live.
As resentment and bitterness slowly grow in you, others will mostly get criticism and/or advice when they look to you for love and connection.
Ignoring the heart is a recipe for disaster.
Now, consider preferring the heart at the expense of the head…
As far as I can tell, it’s dangerous in two ways.
First, the heart is ambiguous.
The heart avoids specifics because emotions do not come with explanation or demarcation.
Any decision based on this vague information alone creates conflict in our beings and drama in our relationships because there’s no clarity about our values or commitments.
Second, the heart is volatile.
Emotions move in and out in various intensities moment by moment.
Based on the heart alone, your behaviors will be as immoderate as your emotional experience.
Volatility takes away any chance you have of success in anything that matters, because anything of great value is only achieved after a long time of committed action.
Following our heart sabotages our own success and happiness because we can’t stick to our decisions.
Ironically, this path also ends in resentment and bitterness because a person who consistently ignores their head to follow their heart becomes chaotic and helpless in the face of difficulty or change.
Intellect and emotions make the best choices.
But how can you learn to process using both the heart and the head if you’re not used to that?
Here’s 3 ways that have helped bring balance to my life.
3 Ways To Balance Head and Heart
1. Believe that you can and should use the head and the heart.
It all starts with belief.
Do you believe that you are as intellectual as you are emotional?
And do you believe that you are as emotional as you are intellectual?
No one is a scarecrow with no brains or a tin man with no heart.
However, too many of us are convinced that only one of them are available to us or only one of them is important.
Appreciate what your head has to offer you.
Your thoughts, your memories, your knowledge, your imaginations, your speculations, and your perspectives are driving your life whether you’re aware of it or not.
Additionally, your heart has so much good to offer you.
Your emotions, desires, and intuition bring richness, authenticity, and depth to everything.
That’s where purpose and passion come from!
Believe that you can use your head and your heart.
Then decide to practice exploring both every day.
2. Develop an emotional vocabulary and intellectual skills.
True processing is a marrying of what you think and what you feel, so you must have tools and skills to do this.
Intellectual skills include memory, comprehension, reasoning, analyzing, and problem solving.
Emotional skills include self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, and empathy.
The ways to develop these skills are vast and varied, but I’ll suggest two ways to improve them.
You could take a literature or writing class.
Not only will this force you to grow in your thinking and analysis, you’ll be asked to integrate your emotions about what you read or wrote into your assignments.
You could also memorize the names of emotions.
Basically, develop an emotional vocabulary.
It’s amazing how many emotions we are capable of feeling, but how few emotions we can name.
If you learn more words to describe what you’re feeling, the better you can identify what you’re feeling and consider them.
To get started, check out Plutchik’s wheel of emotions.
3. Journal
Regularly get your thoughts and feelings out on paper.
The journaling process pulls on the head and the heart as you relate what happened, what you think, and how you feel.
I answer the following questions when I journal:
What happened?
What do you feel?
What do you think?
What will you do?
I made a template in OneNote with these questions and I answer them in a bullet point fashion.
This helps me to integrate my head and my heart.
It holds me accountable to living a life of integrity.
But if you don’t want to journal how I journal, journal your way!
Any form of writing what you’re thinking and feeling will increase your self-awareness.
It’ll help you think through your life more effectively.
If you’ve lived predominantly out of your head or heart for years, integrating the two can be awkward and even frustrating.
Schedule time with a counselor or a coach if you’re struggling.
Happiness comes when the head and the heart appreciate and work with one another.
It’s worth all the effort and struggle. Don’t give up!
Let me know if I can help. Email me at joshua@joshcolecoaching.com.
I’m rooting for you!
Josh