What is Wise Mind?
Have you ever noticed that your thinking can be overtaken by your emotions sometimes? You know there’s a logical part to yourself that would be able to talk yourself down, but it can seem really hard to connect to that part when you are overwhelmed by emotions.
The opposite can also be true. Do you ever act purely on logic, without taking the time to really consider your emotions? When this happens, it can feel like your decision making is not in alignment with what you really need.
When you are able to integrate your emotions and logic, you can operate from a “wise mind” place. Wise mind is calm and grounded. It can show up as intuition, knowing, or a gut feeling. If the intuition or knowing would still stand even if you removed the intense emotion of the moment from it, you are probably using wise mind.
How to Cultivate Wise Mind
One way to get into wise mind is to consciously bring in reason when you are feeling overwhelmed by emotion, or consciously bring in emotion when you are stuck only in reason. You can ask yourself, “what does the reasonable part of me say about this situation?” or “how am I really feeling about this?” Once you have that information, you can try to join it with what you are already experiencing.
Wise mind can take some practice to develop. At first, wise mind might only show up after being overtaken by emotion, when you have had some time to calm down and review the situation. That’s okay. That’s a great start.
Mindfulness Practice Helps
A mindfulness practice can help you strengthen wise mind. Practicing having conscious awareness of your experience in the moment will help you notice what is happening when your thinking is starting to skew toward emotion or reason. When you have this awareness, you can work to consciously move yourself toward wise mind.
If you would like to learn more about mindfulness, you can read more in my previous blog: How Mindfulness Can Improve Your Wellbeing
Therapy is a great place to work on developing wise mind. If you are interested, I would love to help you with this. Call me at 805-664-1177 for a free consultation.