Feeling Is More Important Than Thinking

Yep, you heard right. While they’re both important, in the final analysis feeling is more important than thinking. First, happiness is the ultimate end goal. Regardless of what you believe will happen after you die, you deserve to be happy while you’re alive.

While stipulating that happiness can vary widely from moment to moment, my definition of overall happiness is feeling good/happy now and being optimistic that you’ll feel good/happy in the future. As an example of a poor happiness decision, I’ve heard that heroine makes you feel great when you use it but terrible later.

Second, business success ultimately is about creating relationships with partners, teammates, vendors, customers, etc., and this takes emotional intelligence. Many of us (especially we men) have been taught that feelings are weakness.

Turns out that women tend to make better leaders overall because of their superior emotional intelligence. The number one predictor of leadership success is your followers’ feeling cared about. They know you care about them, so they’ll care about you in return.

Let’s apply my Principle of Balance & Justification SM (PB&J) to this discussion. It states that most things plot well on the normal curve, and this means that the best/happiest path is usually the “balanced” option at the apex of the curve.

In making leadership decisions, for example, at one extreme end of the normal curve we can over rely on rational analysis and fail to fully leverage the emotional engagement motivation of our followers. At the other extreme end of the normal curve we can over rely on emotional engagement motivation and fail to fully leverage rational analysis to think through our options and choose the one that will yield the best results.

The best decisions come from leveraging both thinking and feeling. Let’s use our strong rational analytical skills to make good choices so that we are successful and happy.

Don’t be a stranger. (770) 993-1129. tdockery@TheResolveFirm.com