I Second That Emotion
Why we allow our hearts to rule our minds. Decision-making…logically.
The other day, I issued this post to a social-media group of die-hard baseball enthusiasts:
“DOES ROGER MARIS BELONG IN THE HALL OF FAME?”
I freely admit it was a loaded question. It’s a well-worn subject that’s been debated for as long as I’ve been alive, but I figured it might wake a few people up and create some fun discussion. I felt I knew the correct answer, but wondered how others might react. I honestly didn't think it would get a great deal of attention. I was wrong. Here are the results, 48 hours later:
I was shocked at the amount of activity it received, and as I write this, the responses continue to flow like a broken pipe(I finally had to turn notifications off.) I say it was a loaded question not because it was a deep or controversial subject (at least I sure didn’t think so) but because I knew it would be, to some, an emotional topic. It was this group of responders I was interested in, those who would react with their heart rather than mind.
Just as one person would answer NO and back it up with hard facts, another would immediately answer YES! ABSOLUTELY! citing admiration and respect, childhood memories and nostalgia as their case. At times the conversation got heated and uncomfortable. In what should have been (based on logic) a clear-cut result, the score after nearly 700 comments was 50/50.
It got me thinking…
Why do we allow our hearts to lead our minds when we know better?
It’s interesting when emotion becomes tangled up in decision making. Just like my meaningless post, solid evidence and indisputable facts don’t always win the day. I guess that’s why nobody’s ever said, “He wears his brain on his sleeve.”
When my family and I recently decided to move away from the city where we were born and raised in pursuit of greener pastures, it was the biggest decision of our lives. There was a ton of emotion involved, leaving family, friends, and jobs behind. But new prospects and opportunities were offered elsewhere. We agonized over what to do. We finally set down with a pad of paper and followed Ben Franklin’s exercise of listing pros and cons, “Stay” or “Go.” We had to find a way to separate what we knew versus what we felt.
Yet society today seems to be chained to emotion over logic, or, what we want vs. what we need, more than ever. Madison Avenue agrees, and their clients are sucking us dry.
Stayed up late watching TV recently? That double-meat-with-cheese sure looks good, doesn’t it? And hey, you deserve it!
I saw a commercial for new trucks the other day, and the guy actually told me I deserved one. What’s crazy is, he knew I worked hard. He knew I played hard. He knew all my friends and neighbors had one. But-he did not know my wife, nor does he want to…
Allowing emotion to override logic can be dangerous. Teenagers do it everyday, and many pay a tragic price. But we are all adults here, and we should know better, right?
I am an avid JFK assassination buff. I started out as a conspiracy believer, for my heart pulled me that way. I then met a man who was a lone-gunman advocate, who instead of attempting to persuade me with his own words, convinced me to investigate the case for myself, which I did. I spent a year on it, setting aside the things I felt for the things I saw. The truth can be easily obscured by the clouds of emotion. Certain people know this; they count on it.
But the places in our hearts can be so comforting, and the arguments dwelling inside so compelling. Where would we be today if Michelangelo and Mozart had listened to their parents? Our world is filled with joy and beauty because certain souls allowed their feelings to take them to special places, when other voices of reason told them not to.
The truth can be easily obscured by the clouds of emotion. Certain people know this; they count on it.
So for you and me, is there a compromise? Is there a place where our heart and mind, our emotion and logic are allowed to play together nicely?
Yes, and it’s called instinct.
Lt. General Harold “Hal” Moore (United States Army) in his “Rules For Battlefield Leadership” says this about instinct:
“Your instincts are the product of your education, training, reading, personality, and experience.”
In other words: what we know, what we’ve done, and how we feel about these things matter.
I used to argue endlessly about this with a peer manager of mine who operated 3 miles away from my operation. He refused to believe there was any room in decision making for anything other than cold-hard facts. Information was truth, and in the long run, truth and nothing but truth drive profits.
I, on the other hand, liked relying on my instincts. I liked taking calculated-risk, getting to know my customers and building relationships with them. I learned to use the data I had compiled concerning their business while at the same time getting to know them personally to determine their intent. I based my decisions on them as much as I did their collateral.
“Those people will burn you,” he would say. “If that customer goes out and gets hit by a bus leaving your parking lot, those relationships are worthless.” His points were all logical, and I did lose at times. But I also won a lot. And my business grew. My customers brought a lifetime of business to me because they felt I cared.
Maybe this is what made Spock and Kirk such a good team. Logic plus emotion. Heart and head. Separately, they probably would have wound up teaching at the Starfleet Academy. But together, they boldly went where no man had gone before.
