Head vs Heart: Is The Head Just Scared?

Have you ever made an irrational decision, and then wondered what made you do it? It went against every logical aspect of your being, but you did it anyway. You justify it with statements like ‘it felt right’, or you ‘just knew’ that it was the right choice for you.

Have you ever stopped to wonder what we base our decision making on- is it purely based on logic vs emotion, or might there be something more to it?
From personal experience, I’ve learned that if I truly listen to what my heart wants- and by that, I mean those desires that are completely illogical, go against everything that on paper is the right choice, and can often be seen as completely irrational- well, if I listen to those voices and follow them, I usually end up much happier.

Conversely, when I apply pure logic to a situation, I don’t always come out of it feeling like I’ve done the right thing. Yes, on paper I’ve done the right thing, but my heart is not convinced.

Is the head speaking through fear-tinted glasses?

I have a theory about the difference between my head and my heart. I think that to start with, when we’re younger, our head and our heart are quite closely aligned. Kids don’t have this big debate about whether they’ve made the right choice- they simply make a decision and that’s that, it’s done.

As we get older, I think that our ‘head’ gets used as an excuse to apply fear to every situation. After all, it’s easy to justify it that way. Your heart might tell you that you want to be an actor, but your head shuts that shit down right away.

It tells you things like ‘there’s no money in that line of work, or security. How will you ever be able to settle down and provide for your family?’ and you listen to it- because it’s not the voice of fear that you hear, it’s your head making informed, logical decisions.

Your head isn’t ‘wrong’.

Your brain has simply collecting all of the evidence from what it’s found around it, put it all together as ‘experience’, and now bases all future decisions on the past lessons that it has learned. It makes sense, really.

But what if you’ve only ever fed it fear? What if your head has never experienced the great positive results that can come from doing what you truly desire to do? Then it’ll tell you that it’s the wrong decision, because it’s working from a lack of evidence to the contrary.

Effectively, the head just ends up being a justification for all of the chances we didn’t dare to take, for all of those projects we wish we’d started but couldn’t justify, for marrying the wrong person for the security that they’d provide. The more full of fear the head is, the harder it’s going to be to truly follow your heart.

What is your heart telling you?

What I mean by your heart is that voice in the back of your mind that knows, deep down, what you want. That voice that asks you why you settled. That voice that knows that you always wanted to move to Paris for a year and take art classes in your spare time.

That’s what I’m talking about- your heart knows what you really want, deep down. When you do listen to it, it’ll point you in the direction of your true desires. It’ll not feel like you’re having a constant battle inside of yourself any more. What’s it saying to you?

Try listening to your heart.

Here’s my challenge to you: take ten minutes out of your day, and listen to what your heart wants. Just hear it out!

You’ll find that you’ll still want all of those things that you used to want, but that your head has put its logical stop to. To me, your heart is the completely uncorrupted version of you. Your head, on the other hand, has gathered all of this evidence over the years as to why you can’t do certain things, and that’s what it feeds back to you. Your heart has no such restrictions.

Give it a go some time- just listen to what your heart is telling you. You may well find the reason that you feel unsettled in your current situation, or the direction that you really do want to take in life. It certainly worked for me.