Do I have to?
They say we have multiple intelligences. Our mind, heart, gut, etc. the list goes on. I am sure personally I have a cookie intelligence as well. But that is by the by. The point is sometimes we just know things, sometimes we have instincts and sometimes we have feelings about things in a certain way.
They say we have multiple intelligences. Our mind, heart, gut, etc. the list goes on. I am sure personally I have a cookie intelligence as well. But that is by the by. The point is Sometimes we just know things, sometimes we have instincts and sometimes we have feelings about things in a certain way.
The challenge I keep arriving back at is how much do we following our feelings, trust our gut, not do the thing that we don’t feel like doing etc. And how much do we carry on and do it anyway because it was planned or it is on our list or our mind thinks it’s the right thing to do.
When your feelings and your brain are arguing who do you follow?
I think this is a fundamental growing up question. When we are children we don’t need to spend so much time figuring out what we want to do, we do the thing we want to do unless we are told not to and we don’t do the things we don’t feel like doing unless we are yet again told ( or maybe even forced to).
Sometimes we should ignore our feelings about soup and eat the soup (overall it is taking us closer to where we probably want to be. – healthy, tall, grown up etc.), But sometimes our feelings are a useful indicator for not doing something, for changing tact, for not forcing but allowing instead.
The question is how do you know what and when?
I do not have the answer to this, but I currently have a working theory. Which goes as follows.
Be clear on overall what you want (what feels good, what lights you up, what excites you, what enables passion in you)
If you are planning anything and it doesn’t give you joy when you are planning it – cancel it, or don’t do it.
If you arrive at the moment of the thing you planned and don’t feel like it – do it anyway (Unless you are super tired) because you at some point felt really good about doing that thing (aka. Getting up to watch the sunrise – energising idea at 10pm less so at 6.30am – but overall sunrise = joy).
This way we start to get familiar and listen to what we really want the bigger things, the consistent feelings, the life we are trying to create. And hopefully plan less or stop forcing things that don’t feel right. But also recognising the trade-off between the slightly longer term and the immediate.
As I said it’s a working theory. And I have a feeling that I would love to spend a week just trying to do whatever I felt like in the moment and see where I got to. Who knows, maybe this week could be the week.