Head and Heart – Thoughts and Feelings – Speak Different Languages
Head and heart are often tied together. But thoughts and feelings are very different.
Lots of people have made this observation over the years.
The head and heart – thoughts and feelings – can be in vastly different places, and often don’t speak the same language.
I’ve written about this a lot over the years. The head and heart can often conflict because of how much they differ.
This is one reason why people will do something they know – in their head – is a bad idea: Because their heart is all for it.
This is one reason people get into and stay in terrible relationships. Not just romantically – in business, friendships, and any other kind of relationship you might imagine. Because they follow their heart instead of their head – or vice versa – and don’t adjust accordingly.
I believe the first issue with this comes from a lack of recognition of this fact. Head and heart – thoughts and feelings – speak different languages.
Recognizing this – and then acknowledging it – can help us better reconcile and work with this. And that opens the door to a lot more control of our lives.
What are these different languages?
The main difference in the languages of the head and heart is less about comparing English to Chinese – or their vastly different written variations – and more about structure.
Thought is unemotional. It’s ideas, notions, concepts, and similar intangibles that are looking to get ahold of something else. They can be random and fleeting – like a song that gets stuck in your head, the visualization that might come to you when I type out hippo in a pink tutu – or any other arbitrary thing in your head.
Feelings, on the other hand, are emotional. Emotions are complicated – and vary within each of us, let alone between us.
Feelings get attached to something deeper than a notion. This is why feelings are not just a what, but also a how. What you feel and how you feel are different animals. What you think is not connected to how you think in the same way – because the how of thought is attached to externals like feeling.
Anger is a what. But how you feel it – white-hot, ice-cold, deep and seething or on the surface and enraging – are very different hows of the same what.
Because of the complexity of feelings – and their massive variations – they can get easily detached from the thought that may have initiated them.
Thought is usually – but not always – connected to feeling. Sometimes after the initial thought, the feeling goes somewhere unplanned and unexpected. Yet sometimes, you have a feeling you can’t place – and until you think about it you can’t make sense of it.
But that doesn’t mean thought and feeling – head and heart – come together. In fact, this might show us just how far apart they can be.
Head and heart together and apart
Many people would love to detach from feelings. There is a real appeal to the idea of the Vulcans from Star Trek and the way they repress feelings with logic.
But that’s the key. Vulcans have feelings – they’re just repressed. Culturally, socially, societally repressed. And many human groups and organizations do the same.
Take any number of religions. Those that reject homosexuals, strive to disempower women and their rights, those that reject science all seek to culturally, socially, and societally repress.
Numerous elements of our society deny individuality in one form or another. And a great deal of how they work to do this is by repressing head or heart.
The reason they succeed in doing so is that we fail to recognize or acknowledge how head and heart are different. The differences in the function of head and heart – and our knowledge of this – goes a long way towards us taking control of our life experiences.
No two people on this planet are alike. Our perceptions of reality, the things we desire, and how we care to live, are comprised of nearly 8 billion (8,000,000,000) variations. That is a lot of differences between individuals.
On top of that – because of the variances in the what and how of feeling – that multiplies exponentially. As such, the what of a feeling like joy gets multiplied billions of times and ways between us all in its how.
We see how we conflict with others due to these many variations. Yet we fail to see how we conflict with ourselves because of them.
When we can recognize and acknowledge the differences in head and heart – thought and feeling – we can work to control change as we desire it for ourselves.
Find and/or create balance
Once we recognize and acknowledge how head and heart differ – we open ourselves to take control over that and bring them together in balance.
To begin the process, we need to ask these three questions:
- What am I thinking?
- What am I feeling?
- How am I feeling?
Asking these questions puts us in the moment, in the here-and-now. Being present informs us of our mindset/headspace/psyche self.
When you know what you’re thinking and what and how you’re feeling – you can see their connections. If your thoughts and feelings are far apart from one another – you can change them.
It’s both as easy as that, and difficult, because what it takes to cause a change varies. It might just be a shift of mindset. But it could be a need for a whole new direction, location, and other variables. The action and intent might be intangible, tangible, or both.
When you are consciously aware of your thoughts and feelings now – you can delve into subconscious and longer-term issues. Relationships that aren’t working, jobs causing illness and stress, family hurting and upsetting us, and similar issues where head and heart can be widely apart.
Mindfulness lets us take control and implement change. In that way, we can find and/or create balance and get our head and heart together. Or at least closer to one another.
Why bother? Because human beings are the ultimate creators in this world. We are empowered to be, have, or do virtually anything we can imagine. You can thrive rather than survive in any number of ways. Gaining balance in your thoughts and feelings – head and heart – gives you the control to drive your life how you desire to.
Recognizing the different languages of head and heart isn’t hard
It begins with mindfulness of thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions.
Knowing that your head and heart – thoughts and feelings – are often on very different pages and speaking different languages, you gain insight into yourself. As you work with this and use mindfulness to find balance between them, you gain control in your mindset/headspace/psyche self. When you and I work with and through this, that ultimately empowers us.
When you are empowered, your mindfulness increases, you become more aware overall, and that gets reflected and spreads to other people. This creates a feedback loop of awareness and positivity – a feedback loop everyone can take part in.
Then, together, we build more positive feelings and discover further reasons to feel positivity and gratitude. That becomes the impetus to improve our lives for the better, help overcome the overwhelming negativity of any current situation, and generate even more positivity and gratitude.
An attitude of gratitude is an attitude of pure positivity. That positivity can generate even greater positive energies – and that is ultimately empowering for all.
Everyone is worthy and deserving of all the good we desire.
This is the four hundred and fourteenth entry of my Positivity series. It is my hope these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone. Feel free to share, re-blog, and spread the positivity.
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