Heart-First versus Head-First

This story is not a piece of research or art. It is a snapshot of feelings and thoughts. Maybe it also resonates with yours?

I tend to see things one way or the other. Or oppose two extremes in order to decide between them rather than find the sweetspot. However, in the end, I often feel that deciding between extremes helps me find a middleground. This time with this question: should I do things heart-first or head-first?

Please let me give you a snapshot of my circumstances, which inspired me to write this. I started my first job in a role that doesn’t exist yet, struggling to match “real-life” expectations with the “live-by ideals” of a student and traveller, navigating between keeping the lightness of a child while being taken seriously by “the big guys”, settling in a new city and deepen the relationship with my gorgeous girlfriend.

To be honest, these things lay heavy on my mind and I am wondering:

What is the best way of dealing with this life chapter? Heart-First or Head-first? What does my first week at school has to do with this?

First Weeks at Schools

Starting school set my path for life-long learning and personal evolution. Not that we have the greatest school system in Germany. More that it helped me navigate through my interests. My first weeks in class, according to my mum, looked like this: excitement, anxiety, curiosity, joy, tiredness, sadness, helplessness, courage and pride. Retrospectively, this reveals a simple beauty — the heart is the navigator. If something makes us feel great, we do it again. If it makes us feel sad, we avoid it. At some point, we try to make sense of the way we feel.

That’s where our head comes in.

While our heart navigates, our head makes connections. Rationalizing feelings and experiences, finding patterns to predict the outcome of our actions and growing to become the “protector” of our heart — avoiding what makes us sad.

Fast Forward. Twenty Years Later

… my head has taken over and developed some impressive heuristics to keep that emotional rollercoaster in check. If heart and head would play ping pong, the score would be something like

Heart 24 — Head 67

But shouldn’t this game be a coopetition? A friendly back and forth? Challenging but supportive? Enjoying the game instead of winning it?

Feeling stuck in a growing jungle of questions I realize head-first can’t be the answer. But neither can heart-first. Rather, head should guide heart when making new experiences. Heart should guide head what’s really important. Head should not play Poker. Heart should not wildly ride the rollercoaster.

Maybe at the end of this article, I can answer some of my own questions. What’s clear to me now is that the game score is alarmingly imbalanced. This is how I will balance the score:

• Heart needs head; and head needs heart. It’s a friendly coopetition, not a knock-out.
• I build and maintain comfort zones to retreat when head needs time to think about what heart felt.
• I let my head analyze the field and develop a game strategy. And my heart play the game.