Brain vs Heart: How to make the brain win when you need it too.

In our early years this is what we battle against most of the time. When our feelings tells us something that our brains completely disagree with such as, quiting a job because we hate it or pursuing a relationship with a person who shows sign of disinterest. Our experience tells us that we should follow our brains, but more often than not our feelings win.

I've watched a seminar Dr. Alan Watkins did on Tedtalks in youtube on how to be brilliant. He demonstrates how one can control results by controlling the underlying factors. He draws levels with the results from the very top, behavior second, thinking third, feeling fourth. There is two more levels below feelings but I won't bother to mention it since I am only interested in the third, thinking, and fourth, feeling. Dr. Watkins confirms that thinking is directly related to how we are feeling and our feeling is directly related to our thinking. They bounce back and forth. Our feelings however, have more weight over our thinking. "If you feel anxious," for example, "its no good of me saying to you...don't worry" Dr Watkins explains.

Dr Watkins confirms that we favor our emotions much more than our thinking. Not having another job to fall back on, most of us would quit our job just because we hate it, a move that our brain completely is not in favor of. Or, despite seeing the signs of disinterest from a partner our brains tells us that pursuing is a waste of time and energy, but our feelings makes us do it otherwise. Knowing that this is a problem, is there then a way to solve this? I believe so.

How to make the brain win over the heart

Note that I do not have anything against trusting your feelings. Life can be great fun to engage in such behaviors sometimes. The truth is I encourage more people to express their feelings more often. However, it's also important to know when the time is right to let the brain win.

I found this solution when I was facing a very difficult decision moving out of my parents house. It was the scariest decision of my life. My feelings tell me not to move out, that staying in the comfort of my parents home living comfortably is the best decision for me. My brain tells me my feeling is doing everything it can to scare me, and reason tells me that moving out and facing the reality of the world by myself is the greatest education I can ever give myself at a young age. This was very very tough decision as you can imagine.

I understood that my feelings will have more impact than my brain in my decision, and if I want a specific result like facing the world by myself, then my only chance of doing so is by shifting my feelings to favor my thinking. So that's what I did, for the next few months I formed the habit of finding all the motivations I could find on why living in my own is important for my growth. I read hundreds of success stories, watch very inspirational youtube videos, searched hundreds of articles in the Internet of the positive side of living on your own. After all of that, my motivation was so strong that I had completely forgotten of all the fears I had from the start. I moved out of my parents house and judging so far on all the things I've learned about my finances, reality, and people, I'm proud to say it was the best decision I had ever made.

Conclusion

It's an essential part of being human in today's world. The world requires us to be more and more logical in todays age. We live in a world where decisions based on feelings can cause expensive lawsuits, major depressions, and worst even death. Getting a grip of your feelings--understanding how you may be able to work with it, is essential to having a successful life.