Head heart and gut

I have been thinking a lot lately about the difference or the ‘gap’ between just wanting something, and actually GETTING it.

Most of us are aware of the analogy of decision making based on our head, heart or gut – and that we often tend to operate stronger in some areas than others. I’ve been thinking that rather than just us knowing or discovering what our natural tendencies are, it’s important that we learn to utilise all 3 of these aspects of our personalities and character to enable us to be more likely to succeed in our goals.

What am I on about? Let me explain what I’ve been thinking when it comes to exercise and nutrition.

1. Our ‘head’ makes logical decisions – ‘I know I should exercise because it is benefiting me in many ways’ etc.

2. Our ‘heart’ makes emotional decisions – ‘I feel horrible being unfit and I know I’d feel wonderful and be more confident if I dropped some body fat’

3. Our ‘gut’ doesn’t appear to use either of the above to make decisions, it simply acts because it has an instinct to act. When something is so much of a habit that you don’t need to think about it or ‘feel’ a certain way to take action, I view that as acting on a ‘gut instinct’.

I personally tend to operate a lot out of my Gut instinct. I will often make decisions just based on a gut feeling about a situation or a person. When I exercise, I don’t logically think about why I’m doing it, or try to convince myself that despite the fact that I don’t ‘feel’ like it, I should do it anyway because I will ‘feel’ better for it. I just no that is not an option not to exercise regularly. It is so ingrained that it is instinct. Other areas are not so ‘gut’ based in my life, but that’s a whole other story..

I think we need to harness the positive things of all 3 of these aspects – heart head and gut. I believe they can all have negatives and positives. For example – our head can work for us if we stop and think about why we want to achieve our goals. It can work against us if we think we can’t achieve something – and our head can be very good at justifying wrong behaviours, or coming up with excuses.

Our heart can work for us if we get into the space of ‘feeling’ how good it is going to be to achieve the ‘bigger’ things in life that we want to achieve. If we use our heart well, we can get into an emotional state where we crave the good feelings and this helps us take action. Sometimes it is too emotionally ‘painful’ not to do what is required to get where we want to go. For example, we may feel that if we don’t exercise, or we eat too much, our clothes won’t fit us well, which will make us feel down on ourselves and discouraged – not a nice emotional place to be in.

Gut instincts can get people into trouble if we don’t use common sense and do what puts us in the right emotional state and head space. They can also help us if we just KNOW without a thought that something is right to do and just do it. This is especially true in our health and fitness journeys when it comes to choosing the best options of e.g. what to fuel our bodies with and deciding whether to push out those extra few reps – or an extra few minutes on the treadmill.

When it comes to achieving the things we want in life, I believe we need to have a DREAM – but we also need a PLAN! Dreaming is the heart stuff – Planning is the head stuff. If you have one without the other, the likelihood of the dream happening is pretty unlikely! That’s why when I suggested that there is positive and negative sides to the head heart and gut stuff, I think we need to learn to use all 3 wisely and effectively.

We can sit down all we like and write out what we want (dream) – and we should do this – but we also need to be coming up with a logical and sensible day to day approach (plan) of how we are going to take action to put these dreams of ours into action.

Our lives are NOW!
I hope that we can get excited about the fact that our futures can be better than today – but we only have today to live how we want to live and start working towards the things we are dreaming of!
Too many people have big dreams, but their day to day actions don’t reflect these dreams. Goals are dreams with deadlines and it is encouraging to feel like every day we are chipping away and getting closer to our dreams and not just having them somewhere out there ‘in the distant future’.

In order to have the body and the health that we want, we need to not just have great ideas, but specific goals and action plans. We need to take some time out of our day to plan – and to look at what is working and what is not. We also sometimes just need to get on with doing the right things and creating the right habits and behaviours. Those things are not always exciting, but they can be if we look at them in a positive way – knowing they are getting us what we want.

I hope this makes sense and is of some use to you if you are wondering why sometimes you want something, but don’t go about getting it.

If you have head heart gut conflicts, take some time to journal your thoughts and feelings. You may find that the solution to a lot of your problems is easily solvable when you get the problems out of your head and onto paper (or your computer!) I found that journalling all these rambling thoughts in some ways helped me understand them better.

Kat