The Spectrum

Warning: This article includes thought-provoking and awareness-building concepts. Awareness is a one-way street; we cannot go back once certain ideas are presented to us. Proceed with courage and self-compassion.

I wrote Fighting for Funds months ago, but continually felt something was missing. I hadn’t yet sussed out what constitutes true confidence. How do we know when it’s real, both within ourselves and others? We are capable of appearing confident when we actually feel insecure, aka ‘faking it until we make it.’ Conversely, we can be blind to our underlying insecurities and overcompensate by blowing straight past confidence to conceit. Somewhere in the middle we get a sense of ‘I got this’ with no other emotional undertones playing in the background, the sweet spot of security.

Recently, a friend who shares my enthusiasm for mental preponderance helped me locate the missing piece of this puzzle. A culmination of what I attempt to describe in Emotional Dichotomy as well as Waking up to Worth. These concepts lie on a spectrum. What we think versus how we feel constitute the axes of this spectrum, and our inner dialogue allows those two voices to communicate (or not, as the case may be). Each are intellectual centres in their own rite, but in the western world we’re socially conditioned to rely most heavily on our highly logical lizard brains, leaving intuitive gut feelings for post-modern hippies and batty new-age spiritualists. 

Well, here’s what a scientific gypsy has to say about it.

The interaction between these two sources of information (thinking vs feeling), establishes a relationship within ourselves. This is the most essential and meaningful relationship we will ever be in, yet some are dangerously unaware of this partnership, between the two voices of our inner dialogue. Does our brain bully and assert its control over everything, smothering that intuitive voice, deaf to its wisdom-saturated input? Or do we predominantly ‘go with our gut’ and wind up in the shit for making blatantly illogical decisions, all in the pursuit of the warm fuzzies? Balancing on this spectrum requires us to become aware of both what we think and how we feel, and start to tease apart that relationship to come to decisions that are informed by both; balanced decisions.

Just when we thought this wasn’t confusing enough, here’s another caveat to consider. Emotions that arise from our intuitive gut feel tend to be stable and consistent throughout time, that fundamental and authentic “I know who I am, what I like, and what pisses me off.” Conversely, emotions that arise from thoughts are much more unstable and transient. Thought-based emotions are almost exclusively influenced by social conditioning and past experiences, which at times make them inherently flawed. Our brains can operate at turbulent extremes, whereas our gut takes a more steady approach. For example, our gut will never feel that putting our hand in a boiling pot is a good idea but our brain might if it thinks it needs the $100 simmering at the bottom. The gut lets us know when something is good (butterflies) and bad (pit), and these sensations persist over time, they stay with us for a while. But the brain undergoes emotional whiplash as it transitions from loving to hating something, and back again, in a matter of seconds.

For me, historically and for a myriad of reasons, trusting my gut feeling proved nearly impossible. The two voices did nothing but fight and severe anxiety ensued. I allowed my brain to try and control the situation, to swing wildly, racing back and forth across the thinking axis of the spectrum. I’d then beat myself up with a 10-ton naughty stick for making such a righteous mess of everything and not getting it right the first time, for being imperfect. Intuitively I knew all I had to do was sit back and watch things unfold, get out of my own way; but my brain was too threatened by that intuitive knowing, it needed control. Basically, I was upset with myself for being human, because this is a very human thing to do! We are all perfectly imperfect. If having a healthy inner relationship was easy, there would be a lot less assholes and pain in this world, but I digress.  This is why I strongly feel that the gateway to the sweet spot, to balance, is trust. Trust in ourselves to take care of situations that directly involve us, and trust in the Universe to sort out everything else that’s outside of our scope of influence…. Which is damn near everything. Humbling, right? 

The result of this integrated trust is security.