Why is it that sometimes we feel like we have two different lives? Maybe it’s our work life and the rest of our life, or our home life and the rest of our life. Whenever we wrestle with any decision, or feel like we just can’t climb out of the hole we are stuck in, what is going on? What needs to happen for a shift?
If you ask anyone how they make decisions, you will get many different answers. Can you run numbers in a spreadsheet and get the answer you are looking for? Can you do a list of pros and cons and maybe get some clarity that way? Can you ask everyone in your life for advice on what they would do? Sure, you can use these methods to attack a problem from different angles, but you are the only one who has the answer – and this answer doesn’t necessarily lie in your head.
What does it mean to know something? When do we ever know anything exactly?
The intellect, while it gets us far along on the journey, is not enough. When it comes to decisions, we need our hearts. The heart integrates. I have no scientific explanation for you, no business case – nothing of the rational sort. I only feel it. I’m not saying throw rationality out the window. We’ve got to be practical in life too, but when it comes down to our own decisions, we know the decision when it strikes our heart. If we shield the center of our chest, we can’t tap into the magic. All we have is speculation without certainty or action.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve analyzed things to death before at some point – almost out of the blue – I just know the decision. It never comes when I’m sitting there trying to force it to come. Rather, it comes when I allow it, when I let it get quiet enough and have the patience to listen to my own voice inside. It comes when I am truly listening to someone else’s struggle and relating it to my own. It comes when I peel away all the shielding around my sternum bone and start to feel the center of my chest alive again.
Voices seem to hide within this wall around the heart until we clear away the clutter and drop in more deeply. Then we let the magic happen.
All the hemispheres in existence
Lie beside an equator
In your heart
- Hafiz
