Today, i’m talking about thinking vs feeling, head vs heart. How often do you feel out of sorts? Like you should be happy yet feel anything but happy.
Maybe you have been working towards a goal, thinking when you reach the endpoint then you’ll feel content and safe. Yet you hit your target, achieve your goal and still feel upset, stressed and depressed or even all of the above.
The reason is that your thoughts and feelings don’t match up.
This week I am going to help identify how you connect to the world to help you to get your thoughts and feelings on the same page.
The effect of not matching up
So let’s first discuss the effect of your thoughts and feelings not matching up.
For example, finishing a project. You thought that once you had finished it you would be happy, yet you hand in the work, the deadline passes and you still don’t feel the way you thought you would, and you’re left frustrated.
Imagine that if when you finish every project and every activity you don’t feel happy, but instead disheartened. This is the impact of your thoughts and feelings not matching up. This is one of the main reasons why many people don’t bother trying new things or finishing projects. They never get the emotional payoff expected, so tell themselves ‘What’s the point in trying?’
By matching up your thoughts and feelings it will allow you to know yourself in more detail and get the emotional payoff. Knowing that whatever you try will lead to you feeling satisfied and content and proud that you tried something new.
So let’s first see which you connect to:
I find that people either think or feel. So the first step is to find out which one you connect to.
An example that might help is to think about a time you were happy. Did you think you were happy, or feel something and associate that feeling with happiness?
Usually, there is so much going on that many are on autopilot. You don’t have time to think about what you are thinking about or how you are feeling, it just happens. Essentially this process, connecting to thoughts or feelings, is a shortcut to living in the world that helps in the short term, but not in the long term. In the short term, it helps you to get things done but in the long term leaving you to feel deflated, bored and unmotivated to try new things.
You might be thinking you are not sure which one you connect to first and that’s alright. This process happens to us on an unconscious level; It’s automatic.
Congruent
At this point, you may be thinking how can you get your thoughts and feelings on the same page? Well, a good example of this is hunger.
Everyone knows what hunger feels like. When l hungry, you eat and feel satisfied. You know what you want, and when you get it you feel content afterwards.
Thinking vs feeling
What this aims to highlight is the importance of being able to marry up your thoughts and feelings so they both work towards the same end goal. An end goal that you will want to achieve both cognitively and emotionally.
I have introduced the topic and hopefully, you know which process you connect to first (thinking or feeling) the next step is to start to connect the two process? together to cater to both thinkers and feelers.
