Hearts and Minds (21 April 2008)

• Pope’s Visit Deamed a Success
  
• Suspected Drunk Driver Hit's Tree & Dies

But … on to today’s subject:

Blaise Pascale said that “The Heart has reasons that Reason does not know.” He was speaking about what is often called “Soul Purpose,” which can lead us to do things that seem less than logical at the time. Especially when young, for example, we fall in love for reasons that have very little to do with Reason. Hearts have led many to marry in haste, and then leave them only to repent at leisure. At the same time, however, choosing based on logic alone has led many to living “lives of quiet desperation” (Henry David Thoreau, in Walden Pond). As a college professor, I knew a number of students who chose their area of study based entirely on job prospects and career possibilities. They knew if they majored in, say, accountancy, they would have a “good” job following graduation. They didn’t stop to think about whether they “had passion” for accounting. They didn’t realize until after they had been working as accountants for a while that they lacked passion for accounting.

It seems to me that we have both a heart and a mind for a reason. In this sense, both “heart” and “mind” are metaphors, with heart being our emotional center and mind being our mental center. Where in our bodies we experience our emotions and where we experience our mental activities are not so important as is the recognition that we need to honor both. Either alone—passion without reason or reason without passion—causes problems.

The question is how to bring heart and mind into balance, not only when we have important decisions to make, but also in our daily lives and interactions with others. It seems to me that the first step is a logical one: We need to bring both our passion—our feelings—about someone or something and our thinking into conscious awareness. To determine whether heart and mind are balanced and in agreement, we need to be able to answer questions about both our associated feelings and our thoughts.

When you are aware that your heart is leading you in one direction, while logic prefers a different way, you can resolve the differences by using an NLP technique called “Visual Squash.” The premise of Visual Squash is that both parts—the heart and the mind—have a positive intention. Both parts want what is best for you. In the technique, detailed in the SCS “Healing with Language” manual and a number of different NLP books, you elicit the positive intent of both parts and then find a way to achieve the positive intent of both heart and mind.

This is probably a technique you can use for yourself—with or without the NLP technique—when your heart is saying one thing, and your mind is saying another. It is a good way to remain “balanced,” and it is a good way to learn to witness the elements of your decision-making strategy.

joel@scs-matters.com
www.scs-matters.com