Welcome to My Blog - Bhushan Kachru

                                                        Head or Heart

                       Which Strikes Success?

                                                          Photo Credit- Mohamed Hassan (Pixabay)

Since times immemorial, mind continues to remain a mystery, dodges and appears to use us according to its desire and wishes. It is blessed with unlimited power and attracts everything concerning our life because of its energy. Unfortunately most usually overlook the impulses of the mind and continue with the ‘rut of the mill approach’. The debate and research is continuing on whether mind is a separate entity or part of our brain.   According to discoveries made several decades back by Roger Sperry, a psycho biologist and Nobel Prize winner, the left hemisphere of our head controls the right side of our body. It is mostly involved with logic, intellectual processing, analysis, rational thinking and verbal communications. While the right hemisphere controls the left side of body and is involved with intuition, creation and process. To sum up the right side of our mind deals with feelings and sentiments and the left side deals with critical and analytical capabilities.

 

It is often observed that most human minds like a monkey may be of flickering and unsteady nature on most occasions.  Mind stores fears, is decisive and evidence based and often plays an important role in organizing, processing and developing our emotions. However,  role of mind in emotions is still being debated. While taking decisions, our mind may come up with several options, including may be rational grounds as to why we need to act in a particular way. However, mind remains unpredictable and may react intensely over a small sensitive issue and possibly induce conflict as it is generally out of bond with the feelings.

 

  On human heart, Bhagavad Gita: Chapter 4, Verse 42 briefly translates to-   “one’s physical brain resides in the head, but the delicate mind resides in the region of the heart. That is the reason why in love and hatred one experiences pain in the heart. In this sense, the heart is the source of compassion, love, sympathy, and all the good emotions”. Our beliefs and feelings control our emotions and understandably we need to control these to manage our lives. Our emotions are the outcome of our thoughts and usually it is not possible to change emotions unless we change our thinking paradigms.  It is said that intuition, instinct, perception etc. lies in our heart where also our true self resides.

Striking Success

Historically success has been the most impressive and amazing brand, treasured right through the school days. Success whether small or big no doubt remains the most important mission of every one’s life. It is like an established trade name that has goodwill and brand equity. In rebuilding success campaign there may be actions, often nervously stretched beyond our expectations and we have companions like emotions, feelings, uncertainty, failures, risks, fear, happy and sad moments.  Striking success will always seem a million dollar question and may have numerous responses and expressions depending on the goal? The objectives of attaining success may vary   such as making more money/ assets, career and academic pursuits, relationships, health etc. Success is a commitment, wholehearted dedication, having a definite goal and a strategy for its attainment.

 Striking success will always remain:

 

                     Persistent…Passion…Perspiration…Perfection… Penchant

                                   Patience…Positive…Practice…Prayer…

 Role of Head/Mind

 Einstein once said that, “Anything is possible if you put your mind to it.” Success is defined as ‘20 percent physical and 80 percent mental’.  Success is developing an analytical mind-set and taking suitable decisions at the opportune time. It is living patiently with struggles, committing mistakes, rectifying these. We all like dreaming but achieving dreams happens only when mind is conscious and awaken.  The mind is sub divided in two- conscious and subconscious minds that often does not work in carrying together. The conscious part is active and thinks, reasons, plans and directs all actions, determines results, makes decisions and takes logical and analytical path based on reasoning. The sub-conscious mind on the other hand is on auto-pilot and is dormant 24x7. The subconscious mind is neither logical nor rational and doesn’t judge whether things are working or not and operates and stores what we see, hear, touch and smell. Our thoughts, beliefs and feelings are the core habitants of the subconscious.

 Role of Heart/Emotions

 Accomplishments in life are an outcome of tolerance, firmness, decisiveness, right habits etc. Emotions often play a significant role in how we think, behave and feel. The emotions we experience daily may motivate us to take action and influence the decisions we make for achieving success. Even in situations where we believe our decisions are guided purely by logic and rationality, emotions may also play a key role.  Our ability to understand and manage emotions (emotional intelligence), has been shown to play an important role in decision-making. Optimistic emotions like thankfulness, empathy, sympathy etc boost morale to be more persistent in reaching our goals—and to some extent help beneficial social relationships. Emotional intelligence (EI) includes the ability to use sentiments and feelings to increase our stimulus and focus. When needed, it has the ability to detach from influential short-term feelings when needed to better focus to operate tasks at hand,

 

                                                     Photo Credit- Andre Noboa (Unsplash)

 Blogger's Opinion

 I opine that the heart (emotions) often speaks to us in silence and is the manifestation of our inner voice, self-consciousness and may have common sense. But head (mind) tries to rationalize our desires, reactions and is critical and objective in nature. There have been instances in my corporate working life or even otherwise when following my heart got me in to troubles and even I faced few failures. Going by heart may always not lead to accomplishing life missions because heart is not judicious. It is color blind, sentimental and may opt for face value and exterior self and this may often lead to obstacles. On the contrary head is critical, focused, evidence based and often may make one ruthless without feelings and ‘I don’t care ‘attitude and possibly egoistic also and emotions often seem dried. Head driven individuals generally are less relationship oriented and always feel that their ‘shirt is whiter’ than the others. Some of them may also be self-centered, cut throat. People driven by head generally don’t accept failures for public perception and other perspectives but on a failure, they fall flat and take quite some time to get back to normalcy. On the other hand poor heart often accepts failures, counsels self, sympathizes and motivates to fight it out. From my working experience or observing people around over the years, I have come to realize that those who are driven by head have fewer and controlled emotions, ultimately rise fast in career and accomplish commanding heights of success  soon. Often I observed them achievement oriented even if it meant being unfeeling, insensitive and lack relationship skills. It is said that ‘listening to our head may lead to more substantial success, but not following our heart may increase the risk of regret’.

 

               

                                                         Photo Credit-Fuu J (Unsplash)

Reactivate Yourself

 I guess most people will have their own experiences and I respect those. Individuals who are able to create a balance between their head (mind) and heart (emotions) ultimately succeed and strike fast success in life. This is the secret behind successful leadership especially in people driven situations. I also feel that emotional intelligence (EI) as the ability to be aware of our sentiments and feelings and depending on the situation, control these; as also use these to empathize with others. This does call for extensively working on one’s head and also controlling emotions. Not easy off course but surely possible if we decide to use ‘switch on and switch off’ policy in our pursuits. Synchronization of our head and heart to work like a team needs to be one’s ultimate call for striking success.

 To tap it— as Charlie Chaplin said once that, “We Think too much and Feel too Little”      

Bhushan Kachru

   Blogger/Author