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Who Is in Charge – Your Rational or Emotional Brain?

A recent NPR story speaks about how our emotional brain often makes those tough decisions – but that’s not a surprise.

If we’re to get honest, we would admit that the big or stressful decisions are often emotional decisions. In our rational culture we learn to justify that our gut feelings are correct with our logic and rhetoric.

The problem comes in our collective belief that our “brains,” or rational minds are in charge. We all have deluded ourselves in believing that as Descartes said, “I think therefore, I am.” This dualistic debate between emotions and logic or mind and body continues to go on in spite of growing research that our emotions are more often what make the decisions.

If you want to make better decisions – feel more. Go to the source. Feel what you are feeling, feel what you want. Honor your feelings. Have your brain, your rational self serve your feelings. Stop fooling yourself. Don’t serve your brain. Have your brain serve you and your feelings.

Your feelings will win out in the end. If they don’t get what they want, they’ll act out like a kid and pout or do some indirect behavior.

I’m sure you’re probably thinking you can’t just do everything you feel like doing, and you’re right ­– you can’t. What you can do to honor your feelings is to listen to them. Often just listening to your feelings is all that is needed for them to feel happy. If you don’t ever listen to them you will stop hearing them. Then either you will not have the skill to sense them or they will not communicate to you because they know they will not be heard.

Some call this process being mindful or being aware. It is just that – sensing and accepting what is occurring.

If you want to be smart – use all your assets, use your feelings.

Let us know how this feels for you.

Further Reading:

1. How to Be Smart – and Produce
2. How to Transform Emotions Into Power

Tagged as: Brain, Decisions, Emotion