As we’ve discussed, attraction is based on getting clearer on how you feel and using those emotions as your guide to create whatever you want out of life. Again, it’s a very simple concept. And yet, following this basic premise can be quite challenging for many of us. Why is that?
Well a major contributing factor is that we humans have become too dang “smart” for our own good, that’s why! In a very short period of time, our brains have evolved from a feeling, response-oriented brain, to a more reason and logic driven brain. Our cerebral cortex, the part of our brain that allows logical thought, has become the dominant force behind our decisions and behaviors. Certainly the rapid evolution of the cortex has had wonderful advantages for humankind. Yet while an animal still relies on its instincts when responding to its environment, we’ve evolved to the point where our thoughts tend to trump our feelings. We still have hits of intuition, we have a “gut feeling,” we can tap into that collective knowing we share with all humankind that lies within every one of us. However, we’ve gotten so used to relying on our rational mind that we often ignore or discount what we are feeling. We live in the world of “reality” where logic rules. And especially for men, it’s not thought of as being very cool to talk about or acknowledge your feelings.
In my personal coaching practice, very often one of my clients will come to me with a decision they are conflicted on. When they are experiencing this, we usually find that the conflict lies between the head and the heart. There’s the option of doing what they really WANT to do (the heart) versus doing what they really think they SHOULD do (the head). The funny thing is, even when we identify that doing what they want to do would make them much happier, most people have great difficulty choosing that path. The rational mind, “the power of the should,” has a stranglehold on the feeling mind. From the time we were infants, logical thinking has been cultivated within us. That’s how we’ve been trained to think in our schools. That is what has been rewarded by our families and society. We form strong beliefs borne out of our logical mind and these beliefs become so deeply rooted within us (sometimes we even call them “truth”), that it become very difficult to transgress them as we get older.
Think of a newborn’s mind – the purest kind of mind. While that child has the potential for logical thinking, that part of the brain is not developed. However, that feeling brain is already developed. Even a baby knows to move toward that which feels good and away from that which does not. In order to best incorporate the LOA into our daily lives, we must re-train our minds to respond in this most natural way. The whole process is not so much about learning (your reliance on your feeling brain was innate), rather than unlearning the patterns of thought we’ve adopted over the years.
There’s no doubt that the rational mind is very useful. In fact everything I write here comes from that part of my being. If your mind were a toolbox, rational thinking would be an all-purpose tool inside that box that gets many jobs done quite well. You’d come to depend on this handy tool to get the job done and leave it right on top of the pile. It would become the first thing you grab whenever you needed a tool. Yet there are some specialty jobs, some more intricate work (like creating precisely what you most want out of life), that you have the perfect tool for within your box. You just need to dig down a bit deeper to retrieve this perfect tool. After that initial effort, the remaining work will be much easier and the results will be much better. Of course in this case, to create the life where exactly what you want is drawn toward you, that more specialized tool is your emotional awareness.
So, get out of your mind, would you?