You may have heard it said that we need to drop from the head to the heart, or that the mind sometimes gets in the way. But what does that actually mean? Antoine de St. Exupéry’s The Little Prince is a philosophical chef d’oeuvre full of great quotes. One of my favorites, the one that hangs on my fridge, is this one: “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye.”
When it comes to decision making, our rational-analytical mind sidesteps our feelings and decides strictly with the head, the left side of the brain, the math and science side. It foregoes checking in with the heart.
Initially, we may believe that that’s wise, and when solving a math equation it’s essential. But in many instances our heart, our feelings, provide complementarily, and sometimes contradictory information to the mind, that is valuable to consider, and can be really helpful – the “seeing rightly” part of the quote.
We can’t see emotions and feelings, they are “invisible to the eye,” yet they are essential to our human condition. We have all made mind based decisions we have come to regret later on because we disregarded the heart, so keep the fox’s secret in mind, or rather in your heart.
