“John, people want to believe that they make rational decisions, but they do not.” My wife kindly reminded me with those words when I was questioning some of the actions of folks that I dealt with early on in the day.
She is of course absolutely right, every human being out there on the planet acts with their heart. We know this on a deep cultural level. Here in the United States when someone is not working or playing to their full potential we say things like; “their heart isn’t in it”.
In 2009 I read a pretty great book called “Sway; The irresistible pull of irrational behavior”. The book was written by, two brothers Rom and Ori Brafman. The brothers detailed how seemingly rational people make consistent and completely irrational decisions.
Every choice you make was done with your heart not your head. Your head may have advised your heart but if you didn’t feel like doing it you didn’t do it. You may point out that you breath and your heart beat and you didn’t have to feel like doing that but you didn’t really make a choice to do that did you? As a matter of fact there comes times when we have beleaguered breathing, due to strenuous conditions and we have to convince our selves to keep breathing.
Two things that will help when trying to understand our own decisions and others is keeping in mind that people always act with their heart.
I worked with a team in a factory. The team was charged with changing technology used in the factory and implementing new technology on the shop floors. One of the things that the leadership talked about was “client buy in”. Client Buy in is the cat of agreeing on or accepting terms or technologies. To get client buy in we as a team could not merely show the users the technology we had to build a rapport with the factory workers and leaders. The factory workers would not offer buy in until they were convinced in their head and hearts to do this.
It is tempting to just stick to the facts and not involve emotion at all when dealing with life but it is foolish and basically impossible. So why do we try? Well, emotions or an emotional show can leave us feeling vulnerable and that is not comfortable. I would however encourage you to get vulnerable and let your emotions show. How come I can stop thinking about the trolls movie and the scene where the two trolls sing true colors? All digressions aside face your emotions allow yourself to be vulnerable and live a great life
The Corrigan Encore 