Posts Tagged by fear

We all reach a crossroads, usually many times, in our lives. Decisions have to be made, directions have to be chosen. We all have our favorite method whether it’s logic, intuition or heart based.

My experience with logic is that it’s great if you have all the facts, lousy when you don’t, and even worse when you think you do but you don’t. Intuition is priceless when you don’t have all the facts. It fills in the gaps where your knowledge is lacking and helps you make a better “educated guess.”

Where does the heart come in? Heart based decisions happen when you have an emotional stake in the outcome, and not always, but usually stem from fear. Fear, often called by some of its other names (worry, stress, anxiety, shyness) is so common in our lives we often don’t recognize it for what it is.

What about decisions stemming from love? Hmm…that’s a tough one. Too many times I’ve seen “love” act to cover another emotion like. Control and insecurity are the two most common reasons.

One example: You love your children and don’t want them to get hurt so you make a decision that seems based on love but it’s really based on controlling the situation and your feelings of insecurity that they won’t make the right decision themselves. I’m not saying stop parenting and leave your children to flounder through life on their own. But stop and consider with thoughts like these: At this age, how much of this decision can my children participate in? Will my child experience more personal growth from my help or am I hindering their personal growth? Sometimes we have to step in and take action to protect our children – that’s part of our job as a parent. But often we can find ways to help them grow if we let them share in the process.

Another example: You love your job and you love the people you work with – hey, it does happen! – but you’ve been offered a different opportunity. Your “heart” seems to be telling you to stay, but you’d better check to make sure it’s not your insecurity clinging to the known factors of your current job before you turn down the offer.

So should you listen to your heart in making decisions?

That’s one of those “Yes, but…” kind of answers. Yes you should, but…take the time to figure out what your heart is trying to tell you. When you listen to your heart, you’re open to discovering some of your biggest opportunities for personal growth and awareness.

Let’s look at some possible results from the examples above.

You become aware that you haven’t trained your children to make their own age-appropriate decisions and take steps to improve your parenting skills. You and your children both benefit. Or you bring your child into the decision making process and discover that they’re wiser than you thought.

For that opportunity that was offered? You might sit down to evaluate the situation your current job and discover you’ve been trading growth for comfort and have become stagnant. You can then make a decision about taking the current offer or finding ways within your current job to grow and develop your skills. Either way, your heart has helped open your eyes.

Wrapping up: Remember that even though you have a favorite decision making method, don’t neglect the others. Take advantage of logic, intuition and your heart in making your decisions and you’ll get results that take you where you want to go faster and on a path that is designed just for you.

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