Think Feel Know

“Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the slave to your emotions.” Elizabeth Gilbert

Someone once wisely reminded me that not everything we think and feel is true. (FYI, I was in a wee spot of mental and emotional bother at the time — worrying about something that might happen or could happen.)

In effect, what I believe this person was saying is that sometimes our minds and our feelings can be so overwhelming that they can prevent us from taking a balanced view of things. That our thoughts and feelings can override our connection with our inner knowing — our instincts.

But how is it that our thoughts and feelings can take dominance over our common sense and our instinctual knowing? I contend that we humans have become much too thinking and feeling oriented.

The Over Thinking Mind (OTM)

“The more you overthink the less you will understand.” Habeeb Akande.

Our brain, particularly the pre-frontal cortex, was designed to be an efficient problem solver, decision maker, behavior moderator and speech regulator. However, our modern day susceptibility toward anxiety has high-jacked this magnificent gift of nature and put it into over-drive.

You see, the OTM causes us many woes as it usually focusses on problems, not solutions. It imagines the worst and does not take in the good.

Over-thinking is both mentally and physically exhausting. And worst of all, it blocks connection to our intuition, inner knowing and, especially, our bodily wisdom. Plus the data that it provides is more often not reliable.

In short the thinking brain needs to be put back into its box and not tasked with jobs that it was not designed for.

Getting in Touch with Our Inner Knowing

“There is a fountain inside you. Don’t walk around with an empty bucket.” Rumi

Our inner knowing is our connection to truth and to power. It can be calming, sensible and insightful. It can also keep us safe when we are in actual danger.

But how do we know that it is our OTM running things or that are in that inner knowing space?

I have learned over time that the best thing to do is to tune into my body for the answer.

For example, when I am disturbed, fearful or insecure I ask myself, “Where in my body am I feeling this? In these situations, I usually feel it in my head, throat and/or my chest.

At other times, when something just doesn’t feel right, when I sense that something is “off” or just not right, I usually feel it in my gut or tummy.

Thus for me, the gut is my instinct detector, while my head, throat and/or chest are my anxiety reactors.

Dealing with the OTM & Responding to “The Gut”

I experience my gut feelings are also far differently than I do anxiety and fear in terms of how they “feel” in the body. For example, my gut feelings present as quieter and simultaneously more compelling, while anxiety and fear, driven by the OTM, are noisier and more distressing.

So, if I am anxious, I need to find a way to self-soothe, and to re-center myself. If my gut is speaking to me, then I need to deepen into it to get more information. Here are some ways to do both.