Do you THINK or FEEL first?
Let me tell you a funny story about a banana milkshake and what it taught me.
Are you the kind of person who knows what’s good for them and trusts that things will turn out exactly how you want them to?
Do you excel in being in the moment, in the Now?
Great! You win!
What do I win, you wonder?
Life! 5 stars!
You can probably tell by now that I am not one of these people and I mostly don’t think things will just work out. So I practice and I plan, and plan and practice some more.
FEEL-driven
Some tend to FEEL first when I naturally tend to THINK first. Let’s call this FEEL-driven vs THINK-driven for the purpose of this story and let me illustrate what I mean with a little milkshake analogy.
There’s a type of people, the FEEL-driven, who when they want something, go and get it. Mostly it’s great, they get to drink their milkshake as long as all the ingredients were present where they needed them to be. Easy, done.
THINK-driven
Another type of us takes a let’s say, more convoluted way! The THINK-driven are the prepared type (yes, read over thinker) and they think about their Future self and ways to make their life easier. So they think ‘When I am tired later I am going to want to drink a milkshake’. So they get the ingredients and make the milkshake in the advance. Great job, you planning genius. But, when it comes to the time they’re thirsty they go fetch the milkshake in the fridge, something isn’t right, the milkshake looks all funny. What?! All that effort for nothing? They might end up spending hours, hypothetically, being thirsty and not drinking the damn pre-prepared milkshake. Until they realise something really important that was staring at them. They realise they were focusing on what the milkshake looked like rather than focusing on what it felt like. They finally decide to drink a sip of that milkshake and it is bloody delicious! In the end they got the milkshake and a life epiphany. Much delayed yes, but bigger WIN! Whether intentionally or not, Planning Me had given me something much deeper that I didn’t know I needed to learn.
So what?
From where I stand, it’s hard to say who really wins between the THINK and FEEL-driven. (Yeah Yeah I can hear you judgey THINK-driven ones, I know you’re thinking ‘Sure and what if they’d run out of milk, what happens to that in the Now lack of milkshake?’ True, being in the Now works best when the conditions are there to support you. Truth is, although it’s really hard not to, there is no point comparing in terms of best or worst because at the end of the day, we really just are who we are. It’s great that both types exist and hopefully we can all learn from one another.
I guess one big thing for THINK-driven people is to learn to trust yourself and that you’re able to give yourself a milkshake when you need one.
Another one for all of us to remember is to rely on all your sensations to make a judgement, not only the most obvious one.
Something to ponder over next time you enjoy a banana milkshake!