A Coaching Power Tool By Ziad Hamdan, Life Coach, SPAIN
Balancing Thinking vs. Feeling
It is only with the heart that one can see clearly; what is essential is invisible to the eye. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
I see many people around me experience over-thinking, and they usually suffer from it.
I have never seen nor heard of anyone experiencing over-feeling. Have you?
We can never over-feel. The feeling is an intuitive, instinctive, natural & pure act of our body.
In many situations that happened to me or my clients, I have noticed thinking leading to over-thinking and therefore becoming a problem that is making us feel stuck.
When faced with challenges, problems, questions, or in front of an important decision, we tend to use our minds to think of ways to face the challenge, solve the problem, answer the question, or make the decision. And many times we jump into our thinking mode very quickly without even taking the time to fully grasp the situation.
In fact, since our childhood, we have been told and we have experienced the benefits of thinking. That’s because thinking works perfectly for simple, easy, straightforward situations. However, the more we grow the more the problems, questions & decisions become challenging, complex, and overwhelming, and the circumstances in which we face them become uncertain and with high stakes.
My power tool creates a space for you to grow, balancing the thinking and the feeling. You are in the driver’s seat and you are guided to shift your perspective:
| From… | … To |
| Thinking | Sensing, Feeling |
| Mind | Body, Heart |
I am not saying here that you should not think. What I would like you to know is that there is a different path to get your solutions, answers, decisions, and more in line with who you are. So I invite you to embark with me on a journey to think, sense & feel in a balanced way identifying when is the best time for you to use your mind (thinking) and when to shift perspective to your heart (feeling).
Thinking vs. Feeling Explanation
Thinking:
The Latin “cogito, ergo sum”, translated into English as “I think, therefore I am”, is the first principle of René Descartes’s philosophy.
Everyone knows this sentence. We’ve been taught it at school. Since our youngest age, we’ve been told that to exist, we need to think… and if we don’t think we simply don’t exist! Imagine the damage that we need to undo! Are we even conscious of it? The glory of thinking is racinated in our deepest beliefs.
Thinking involves our brain, but also other internal factors (our values, our experiences, our limiting beliefs, our fears, our traumas, our impressions, etc.) and external factors (circumstances, weather, season, time of the day, presence of other people around us, social media, what society wants, what our family needs, all the “shoulds”, the “I have to, etc.).
In this part of the coaching flow I will use questions like the following to raise your awareness of the potential limitation of thinking and the influence that many internal and external factors and patterns have on our thinking:
- What do you think?
- What does “I should” mean to you?
- But what do you want?
- What is influencing your thinking right now?
- What is your mind telling you right now?
- How is your thinking impacting your life?
- What if you let go of the thinking?
- Who is telling you that you should? Or that you can’t?
The present power tool will guide you to let go of your thinking. It will take the time it needs for you to be ready to start seeing another way of approaching things: feeling.
Feeling:
The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart. Helen Keller
Our heart… this organ that beats and selflessly pumps blood in our veins every second of our life to keep us alive. Beyond that, our heart is this red zone of our body where the most powerful tool every human has sat: love. Imagine life without love. Love starts by loving yourself. Once you’re there, you will shine love on everyone around you. Love is so powerful. Some studies show that women are better leaders than men because they use their hearts more in their business decisions.
When we use our heart to think… This is the best combination. To help you achieve the transition from thinking with the mind to feeling (or thinking) with the heart, we will go through an intermediary step which is sensing (through the body). In fact, the body speaks the language of the heart. By focusing your attention on what your body is saying, you feel what your heart is saying.
Remember this: when you are thinking with your mind, you always have to justify. However, when you feel with your heart, you just feel. And it is enough.
During this transition, I will use questions like the following to guide you:
- What is your body telling you here?
- If your body had a voice, what would it say to you?
- How do you feel?
- What is your heart telling you?
- Where do you feel this in your body?
- What is your gut, your intuition telling you?
- Imagine you have no constraints, what would you do?
- If you could think with your heart, what would be your decision?
- How could your heart save you?
- I sensed something in your body language now. What do you think this is trying to tell you?
With these questions, I will invite you to shift your focus from the mind to the heart, through the body. By listening to your heart, you will have all your answers.
Trust me.
Do you feel confused, overwhelmed, and lost now? Not knowing what you want in life? Not knowing what to decide? What to do?
Trust me.
There is a way to find your answers. The most authentic and genuine answers. In line with your authentic Self.
With this power tool, and in my coaching space, you will be gently guided through this way for you to find your most powerful and authentic answers.
The Shift
There’s something within you that knows what to do. There is a power greater than you that knows how to take care of you without your help. All you’ve got to do is to surrender to it. Surrender your thoughts, your mind, your ego, to the current that knows the way. It will take care of you. It will take better care of you than you can ever imagine. Robert Adams
The shift will allow you to make decisions from a place that is aligned rather than out of alignment; it will allow you to get out of your auto pilot mode and get some serious answers to your deepest questions.
Questions that will help instill this transformation:
- What is your body telling you?
- How is your body reacting to this thought?
- What do you feel in your body?
- What could be another way of looking at things?
- How do you feel about it?
- How can you make sure that you keep this new perspective with you?
Together, we will help you shift from thinking to feeling and we will be able to measure progress by monitoring the qualitative experience of your daily life. In fact, your mind’s ideas tend to have qualitatively a different experience than your “feeling” or “deeper knowing”. They tend to have a little bit more contraction, to be a little bit noisier and they have a particular buzz to them. They create acceleration & excitement but also anxiety and a little bit more fear. It feels like a roller coaster.
When you shift. Your daily experience tends to be quieter. There is ease there. It is not trying to convince you of anything. It has the resonance of: “This is what is happening next. Would you like to come alone?”
In the process, you will face a lot of resistance as you have a lot of ways to defend yourself from that. The mind and ego will come and say: “we can’t do that, what would be the consequences of actually following that, I’m scared of that”. And if we look at it, most of that is based on your old ideas and all the ways that that mind and ego are trying to control the situation and keep you safe and protected. However, this is also creating stress for you.
Especially when it comes to making these big decisions you can be caught in these cycles of analyzing the pros and cons of everything on a spreadsheet, wrestling with it, and asking all your friends what you should do about it.
What if there is a simpler way to connect to what is right for you at this moment. That’s what we are going to explore during the shift to: “This is what’s next”. It’s the heart’s communication. When you taste it, when you start to touch it, there is a feeling of: “oh yeah there is a voice that is uniquely mine and when I align with it something in me feels more whole and fulfilled”.
At this moment only, thriving becomes possible.
Thank you.