Should You Follow Your Heart or Your Head?

I used to despise the saying “Follow your heart.” Then I picked up some book on finding purpose and decided I liked it. Then the saying let me down, so I disliked it again. Now I have learned to partially get along with it.

I feel like I can’t be the only one who fights with this particular quote that we are individually somehow brought up to believe is either completely true or completely false. But it’s neither. Eleanor Roosevelt said something that seemed a little more near to the truth: “To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart.” But then I thought it through and this only seemed perfectly accurate for her and probably some other people. I think if I never listened to my heart, I would be entirely prickly and miserable without color.

Most people need to use both head and heart in almost every type of situation. Marilyn vos Savant was on point when she said: “If your head tells you one thing and your heart tells you another, you should first decide whether you have a better head or a better heart.” This is truth.

Before embarking on any analysis of yourself and an effort to improve the decision-making state, you ought to know this first. Everyone must find one’s own working balance, because it seems to me, we all have differing levels of strength in heart versus strength in mind. In the midst of my confusion on mind versus heart, I read a few studies and psychological analyses. They mostly determined through statistics that using logic (the mind) would end in best results. Mainly due to the fact that the majority of bad outcomes are due to decisions based off of emotional whims that are concurrent with less time, thereby one needs to think things through in the risky decision making processes (Psychology Today).

This didn’t quite sit well with me. I feel like they were analyzing the wrong things. I understand that this is because it is much easier to quantify an experiment with actual pass or fail outcomes, however I don’t think risky-business decisions is where most people are concerned with whether they ought to follow their heart or not.

I make pretty good business decisions. Always have — unless too much emotion is involved. I’m terrible at love when I actually exert effort. This is definitely due to the fact that I have ‘little’ heart/emotions put in to my day-to-day business decisions (even on a whim). But the ultimate reason for me to begin building the foundation for the business I started… that’s all heart. I believe there is a balance there. It’s a balance that I have almost ironed out.

The heart creates a passion, motivation, and drive from the get-go to get started, but also is necessary to persevere. The logical mind is needed for all the nuts and bolts in between (even quick, on-a-whim, decisions).

Now let’s look at the flip side: love gone wrong. When one is completely all heart when relationship-oriented, the nuts and bolts fall loose. You can chalk it up to caring too much, but really it’s over-sensitivity. Think about it this way: say your husband says the house has been a mess. On a good day, a day you are happy and everything has gone well, you may take his words exactly as they are and think: “He’s right, we’ve been busy, we should find time to clean up.” On a bad day, a day you’re hyper-sensitive or in a lousy mood, you may think: “Is he really calling me a slob right now?!?” Then it’s downhill from there.

What can one do when the outcome of a situation is based on a variable that is completely irrelevant to the problem? You just need to really understand the situation logically. It would be impossible to take emotion out completely, because a bad mood is a bad mood. But follow your mind’s strongest logic when you’re in a sour mood and be literal, almost robotic.

Nuts and bolts of anything seem to require the mind, micro-management. The power button and throttle seem to require the heart, macro-management.

My point is this: we have a head and a heart for a reason. Use both.