Letting Your Heart Brain Lead
The Most Important Advice You’ll Ever Get:
“Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.”
-- Aristotle
Have you ever been in the middle of making an important decision when someone told you to “follow your heart” as advice?
It makes sense that the expression is so common.
Even if we don’t know the science behind the expression, we know there is age-old wisdom in these three small words.
Our heart connects us to what is most important in our lives. It connects us to our priorities and values, and it helps us connect with people who share similar priorities and values.
Most of the time, you can trust your heart-brain to give you honest answers to your questions.
So what’s our heart-brain is good at? Let’s take a look...
The Heart-Brain’s Best Work
The heart-brain is complex. It is a system of neurons and neurotransmitters, along with different proteins and support cells. Dr. J. Andrew Armour first introduced the concept of the heart operating as a separate brain.
His work put forth the idea that the heart’s sophisticated neural network is enough to qualify it as a ‘brain.’
The heart sends more messages to the brain than the brain does to the heart - and these messages affect our motivation, mood, and attention.
As leaders, motivation, mood, and attention are key factors in being effective.
The heart-brain is best at:
Peace
Forgiveness
Joy
Trust
Connection
Gratitude
Love
Generosity
Empathy
Relationships
And its highest form of expression is compassion.
Because of the strong connection and communication between the heart-brain and head-brain, keeping your emotions in check isn’t just about being happier - it’s about being healthier.
The connection and communication between the heart-brain and head-brain have been illustrated in studies that have shown that experiencing intense anger increases your risk of heart attack by 5x and your risk of stroke by 3x. Those risks exponentially increase when we’re talking about grief after the loss of a loved one.
The Heart-Brain’s Impact on Decision Making
Leaders who can harness the heart-brain’s natural attributes and find healthy ways to navigate emotional pitfalls, can optimize their effectiveness and build stronger teams.
When your heart-brain leads the decision-making in your life, you’ll experience fewer emotional upsets and more positivity.
Why is that true?
Because the heart-brain instinctively makes choices that are empowering, life-affirming, and true to who you really are and what you really want.
That’s why we somehow know it’s not bad advice when someone tells us to follow our hearts.
When we are making a big decision, we can activate our heart’s intelligence to choose the path that is aligned with our deeper purpose in life.
And when we do that, we create more authentic, intimate, and harmonious relationships and achieve our goals more quickly and easily.
Ready to Optimize Your Heart-Brain?
To optimize your heart-brain, loosen your hold on stress, worry, and anxiety by actively choosing joy, compassion, and appreciation instead.
Here are things you can do in your personal and professional life to help your heart-brain be its best:
Choose activities that express love and self-love
Adopt stress-reduction habits that ease tension and promote healing
Build an inner reserve of energy that helps you to thrive (try meditation + movement)
Let Your Heart Lead the Way
We are all programmed to have a “dominant brain” - the one we default to as the leader. The one we consult when making decisions. The one brain we listen to more than the others.
Oftentimes in my work, I find that individuals, especially leaders that need to make critical decisions on an ongoing basis - so many are led by their head-brains.
But if our heart’s brain is meant to guide us in our highest expression of compassion, enabling us to express greater joy, and peace, then surely you can see the problem.
If this is the heart’s calling and you are stubbornly letting your gut-brain or your head-brain lead instead, then simply ask yourself, why?
Not letting the heart-brain lead robs us of our ability to live our fullest lives.
Ultimately at the end of our days, most people will have wanted a life of peace, forgiveness, joy, gratitude, love - and that’s the domain of the heart-brain. Let it be the leader of your wisdom. Especially if you’re leading others.
How we can help --
Want to start listening to your heart and optimizing your decision making and leadership skills?
If you’re ready, so are we! My team and I take a whole-being approach to leadership training and can help you become an Integrated Whole-Self Leader™.
By integrating a person’s three centers of intelligence with their genetically-coded talents to create awareness and intuitive connections, we facilitate a journey that leads to Whole-Self Intelligence™.
As a multiple Brain Integration Technique (mBIT) Certified Coach, I specialize in coaching others on how to access their full potential to elevate self-leadership and create intentional results.
My leadership training and employee development programs are built on a strengths-based approach that includes nurturing the mind-body connection.
Because of this, I can guarantee that transformation in relationships, results, and revenue will happen.
We specialize in helping teams and organizations understand and implement practices that cultivate the power of interdependence.
The Wellsiliency™ Institute has developed a series of interdependent courses to comprehensively address the knowledge and skills leaders and teams need to build strengths-based values-driven performance cultures where all experience belonging.
Is cultivating a deliberate culture that leaves a lasting legacy of positive impact in the lives of others important to your organization?
Our institute has designed five program pillars to help leaders be well and lead well through a skill progression from Whole-self Intelligence™ integration to boost resilience and confidence, strengths-based wellbeing, strengths-based team building, strengths-based leadership, and psychological safety to unleash collaboration.
We don't believe in providing superficial programs; instead, we strive to become your collaborative partner by equipping your leaders with the skills they need to create meaningful, enduring outcomes. Our ultimate goal is to help you build a legacy of leadership excellence that will make a real difference in your organization's success.
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Let’s partner to create a more harmonious and sustainable future, where cooperation and mutual support lead to thriving.