Let Your Heart Be Your Guide to How You Live Your Life

Just like you heart pumps life around the body so does it create thoughts and emotions that direct how we live our life. I believe that my heart has been something I have often left behind in favour of logic or thought that has caused misdirection in my own life. If the heart is the true centre of our thoughts and emotions, and the most direct connection to our soul then perhaps we should listen to it more. If the heart is love, then love I would guess would be a much more powerful guide to one’s life than anything else.

I am no love expert but I know that my heart has been a worthier guide in my life than logic has ever been. Perhaps logic has kept me safe in certain situations and there have been many a time that I’ve done, spontaneously so, actions that haven’t been the wisest. Decisions in life are not always easy. Some people struggle over the decision of what to wear or eat, or how to muster the energy to get out of bed. These can seem like simple decisions to make, yet they can all have consequence to some level in our lives.

A decision is made after some consideration as to the best possible choice that there is. Here is the thing, we will never really know whether the decision we make will have the best outcome, there are to many variables. This will of course depend also on the complexity of the decision that we are attempting to make. Behind most of the decisions we make that have some affect on how we live this life there is desire. Desire is the driving force that makes as move towards making what we want reality. If this desire is strong this may reduce the time to consider all possible outcomes therefore affecting your ability to enhance your decision prospects. Many desires that we have may be driven by the heart and emotion, not logic.

An impulse which is a desire without any consideration will lead us to do some pretty regretful things, I am guilty of this. When a decision is not impulsive, desire will often cause an inner battle between logic and heart. Logic is reasoning that is based on strict principles of validity. To put simply I feel that rational decisions assess the facts based on what evidence is available to make a decision and this will relate to what one’s mind perceives to be correct or true. An outcome based on the facts of the situation will be more likely than if we were to act purely on emotion. A balance of the two may therefore be wise.

Logic comes from mind while emotion is from the heart. It is said the logic is conscious validity whereas the heart is more unconscious in nature. I read an article that suggests we need a balance of logic mind and emotional heart in life. I can agree to that but what is the correct balance and how to we know when one is over powering the others and which one to use in what situation? Tough question. I feel in my own experience that only in greater awareness can you be better connected and therefore directed by both intuition and the logic of the mind.

This article presented some research the indicated that emotion was generally a more powerful than logic because logic. For the need to satisfy ones needs and ensure one’s safety in life an emotion will often overrule any logic. The study examined several speeches carried out and then judged by one evaluator and assessed as to whether they were written from a logical or emotional standpoint. The way they were perceived by the judge was directly dependant on whether the judge agreed with the messages presented in the speech. Those that the evaluator agreed with were rated as more logical and those that were not in agreement were considered more on emotion.

The article reviewed rules of persuasion in regards to delivering a speech based on the logical and emotional components. However, as it relates to life this article highlighted to me that logic is usually a measure of agreeable stimuli whereas regardless of the presentation of any fact, reasoning can be pushed to the side in face of emotion.

To further highlight the power of emotion the article presented and interesting analogy about walking a plank of wood. Imagine placing a plank of wood on the ground and walking over it several times. Now imagine walking the same piece of wood extend it between two building a hundred meters in the air – the logic of walking the plank of wood that you already did several time is now overruled by emotions of fear. This highlights the power of the heart and how emotions have some pretty amazing powers.

Here is the twist that for me is tricky to get my head around. If the heart and the emotion that is created there is such a powerful protector of our fate, then why doesn’t it lead us to a higher state of being in life? Why aren’t we intuitively directed towards greater freedom, fulfilment and happiness in life? The answer that I find is only that our mind and logic deny much of what we should be doing from occurring. Let me try explain this further with some clarity.

An emotion is powerful enough to make us do something pleasurable or avoid something painful. In certain situations, logic will have no say in the matter. In the example of walking the plank over a massive drop our fear will prevent us from the potential pain or death that may occur if we fall. There is a part of me that believes there is some logic at play here, in example one can only assume that if you fall you would kill yourself. But logic is really fact based on experience than the true experience you have had is walking that plank knowing that you can do it. You have not experienced falling from such heights so therefore it can only be an assumption and in this situation I would suggest that this assumption has only risen from the emotion of fear.

I do wonder if you had absolutely no fear, no emotion, would you still hesitate to walk the plank? Maybe this is exactly what those crazy building climbers/jumpers are able to do, remove the emotion of fear and then using logic proceeding to do some amazing stunts. Check out YouTube videos with James Kingston.

On the other hand, an emotion will make us mover towards pleasure with no thought as to the logical consequence. When pleasure aims to satisfy a human need or desire we will move towards it. Think about taking drugs or drinking as a simple example. In experience your logic knows that the long-term pain and health effects of these behaviours is not wise yet the short-term pleasure they give us is powerful enough to make us continue to partake. We will drink ourselves stupid knowing that the next day will be a write-off and we will feel like shit, in favour for a few hours of fun. The power of emotion can be supported time and time again with these kinds of examples. Regardless of any logic, emotions & heart will drive us towards pleasure and remove as from pain.

Most of these examples however are in relation to immediate pleasure and pain. When we consider long-term pain and pleasure it is harder for us to conceptualise the true consequences that may come from a particular behaviour. Without direct experience this will only add to favouring short-term favour of pain and pleasure. I believe this is when our logic can provide some benefits in directing us on a path towards progression but can often be a misguided path that isn’t following a life true to ourselves.

The best example is that approximately 83% of the work force are not happy with their job. There is another statistic I read that suggested 1 in 3 people are suffering depression. Now, there are a whole array of reason why people may fall into either of these categories but I would suggest that a large part of the reason is that they are experiencing pain that is associated to their current situation in life. It is also likely that their past has attributed to their pain and put them into the place that they are within and the reality is that this place in life is not conducive to their overall happiness. When people aren’t happy it means that some part of their life now is not supportive and for that reason change must happen.

We know this! I know this, I have experienced it, I have been there, depressed and unhappy with my work that has consequently affected other aspects of life and my overall happiness. My emotional state wasn’t great and this certainly wasn’t helping me. But if emotions truly do drive us away from pain and towards pleasure then why don’t they drive more of us to make true change in our life. I believe it can only be because logic keeps us there. To release yourself from this state, however mild or grand it may be, you have to push logic aside and allow your emotional state to drive you to a better state of being.

Negative emotions, if not channelled correctly, can lead us to doing some pretty stupid stuff. And this is where caution must be taken. If you are feeling unhappy, angry or spiteful you may choose short-term behaviours that temporarily aim to satisfy your emotion yet have no effect on reducing it longer-term or permanently. A negative emotion helps us create awareness that something is not right. They should push us towards favourable solutions but often don’t.

Here is what happens. You have a negative emotion. Your ultimate desire is to reduce this emotion and reduce the reoccurrence of it. You have awareness and this allows you to understand why this is not beneficial to your state in life – you’re well being. With awareness comes solution. At this point logic intervenes. Logic puts things in to perspective based on current life experiences, facts and the perceived reality of it all. The issue with logic however is that its perspective is very narrow and its reality is merely a perspective based on our thoughts and therefor not necessarily the truth. If logic wins, and often it does, you continue in your state in favour of short-term wins. A drink, watching T.V, going to the mall, eating, spending money, activities that will assist your emotional state momentarily.

Think about the reality of many of us and our place of work. We don’t like it. We really would like to change but our logic tells us that we need this job. Our logic says things like “how else will you make money.” It will convince us that there are not as many opportunities for us to create the quality of life we currently have. It will tell us that we need to pay for the mortgage or car repayments, to pay off that new theatre set-up we just installed that was only an emotional distraction in the first place. So logic wins and we find ourselves locked in to our suffering. There are many examples of how logic rules and really most of these expectations are what we as a society have created. The truth is that there are other options for us an we don’t have to accept our current emotional state.

I believe our emotions and our heart is a powerful driving force in life. And regardless of the type of emotions, they exist for a reason and that is to tell us the path we should be taking. If your emotion speaks to you listen to it. Allow logic to be heard but don’t base logic as absolute fact. Do some more investigating and see how much truth there really is to your logical perspective. Flip this investigation towards the emotions as well. In deciding to live my career to pursue my heart I had great emotional and logical battles. To pack up and sell everything and to leave a career that I was doing well in didn’t come with ease. However, I followed my heart and it has been the best more yet. I asked myself when logic wanted to argue with my heart, “what is the worse thing that could happen?” Logic didn’t have any great experience or proof or answer to this question, therefore my heart won. I am now living with greater freedom, fulfilment and happiness then ever before.

If you are interested in finding more freedom, fulfilment and happiness in your life take the opportunity to jump on the Discovery Call. Valued at $250, this is a one on one coaching session to help you define your hidden why and discover the action steps to getting your there.