WHICH SHOULD WE FOLLOW ?

There’s a sweet and addictive rush we experience when we meet people we have a romantic-connection with. We think about them, we want to spend time with them and we smile when we see their names pop up on our phone. We follow this rush into the abyss, we start to create routines together and we start to picture a life with them until.... IT happens. We start to realize the incompatibility in the connection.  

THE MIND’S GIFT OF CLARITY
The mind doesn’t always lead us to clarity and I think we all know that but the mind does have a gift of doing so if we can learn to navigate it. It can assist the process of evaluating several choices so that we may make wise decisions. Our mind helps us if we help it. It has the ability to keep us focused in any area of our life if we create a strong foundation to pull us back in alignment. If we don’t build a foundation, which I have come to know as my blueprint, we will become distracted and settle for anything that makes us feel good. This foundation consists of our values, standards and boundaries. I highly encourage all of us to take time to sit down, write these out, make a commitment to stay true to our foundation and elevate it as time goes on. Elevating a foundation requires humility to the fact that life is an unfolding mystery and we must understand we will evolve as we experience it. This evolution often only makes our foundation clear and stronger, but there are times we completely stray away from it which will lead us to feeling confused and lost. These are the moments we go back to square one, write our foundation and reflect whether we have been prioritizing our life through it. Sometimes, it also calls for a new blank slate to undo a foundation that was never genuine to our truth to begin with. The mind has its purpose and it’s meant to be used as a tool in times where our heart’s desires are in contradiction to our foundation. 

THE HEART’S GIFT OF ROMANCE
When looking up definitions for romance, there were a lot of perspectives that caught my eye but I wanted to find the most simplistic and base definition. At the very root, romance is merely a combination of excitement and mystery. Chemistry is the initial spark of the momentum of a romance. Many may say the heart is a fool for love but the heart has its way of making us feel hope through its desire for romance. Dr. Andrew Huberman is a neuroscientist who mentioned in his Podcast, “Neuroscience meets Psychology”, a study in the 1960s, where people were given the option to stimulate different areas of their brain in the clinic. Although they all chose to evoke an array of stimulations, the area they preferred the most was the stimulation that evoked, as Dr. Huberman said, “mild frustration and anticipation that something good was about to happen” which later in the podcast, Psychologist Dr. Jordan Peterson referred to it as hope. They finish this topic by saying that hope is what moves us forward and the most powerful stimulation in the brain. Romance is not something to take lightly, it has the power to propel us towards someone or something without it actually being of benefit to us. Romance is a force that when used unintentionally, can lead us to foolish decisions in our love-life. When intentionality is met with romance, it can do wonders to propel us forward towards a relationship we remain devoted to.  

HOW DO WE USE BOTH?
I reflect on this question and realize how crucial they both are. Being able to touch on their individual gifts and how they bring meaning to each other. They are tools for us to use but it’s up to us to use them intentionally or unintentionally. We can think of them as opposing ideas that cause a chaotic inner-battle. We can also learn from each and recognize them as a duo that help create harmony in our love-life. I personally choose to respect the heart’s force of romance while honoring the mind’s ability to bring clarity. 

MESSAGE FROM VICTORIA
I hope we all create space to have honest conversations about how we’ve been using the mind and the heart in our life. If you’d wish for support through this process, I’m only a message away using the “contact” tab. Peace and love be with you always.




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